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GROCERY WARNING
How to recognize and avoid the groceries that cause blood pressure, and other common diseases cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high
BY MIKE ADAMS
Grocery Warning
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 1
GROCERY WARNING - PART 1 Rened carbohydrates, white our, and added sugars ................................................................................... 3 Pioneering authors and researchers ............................................................................................................. 3 Avoiding rened carbohydrates is essential for optimum health .................................................................. 3 Rened carbohydrates contribute to an alarming number of diseases ........................................................ 4 Carbohydrate consumption and diabetes ...................................................................................................... 5 The ugly politics of sugar, medicine, junk food and diabetes ....................................................................... 6 The American Diabetic Association offers questionable nutritional advice .................................................. 7 Syndrome X ................................................................................................................................................... 8 Carbohydrates and obesity ............................................................................................................................ 8 The low-fat diet debacle ............................................................................................................................... 9 Carbohydrates and heart disease ............................................................................................................... 10 Carbohydrates and mental disorders .......................................................................................................... 11 Carbohydrates and cancer .......................................................................................................................... 13 Theories on why rened carbohydrates lead to cancer ............................................................................. 14 Carbohydrates and hormonal disorders ...................................................................................................... 14 Rened carbohydrates: Promoters of Disease ............................................................................................ 16 The rened foods factory ............................................................................................................................. 17 Natures grains start out quite healthy ....................................................................................................... 17 How rened, milled grains cause nutritional deciencies .......................................................................... 18 The healthy ingredients are never intended for human consumption ........................................................ 19 Its all about prot, not health ..................................................................................................................... 19 The FDA actually banned vitamin-enriched sugar ..................................................................................... 20
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Rened foods cause nutritional deciencies ................................................................................................. 21 Contamination of milled, rened carbohydrates ............................................................................................ 23
GROCERY WARNING - PART 2 Metabolic disruptors found in everyday foods and groceries ........................................................................ 25 Sodium Nitrite .............................................................................................................................................. 25 Sodium nitrite gives children brain cancer and leukemia ........................................................................... 26 Sodium nitrite consumption is strongly linked to cancer ............................................................................ 27 Citizens Petition FDA To Require Sodium Nitrite Warnings ....................................................................... 28 The USDA tried to ban sodium nitrite in the 1970s .................................................................................... 31 Articial chemical sweeteners ...................................................................................................................... 32 Aspartame .................................................................................................................................................. 32 Early testing shows aspartame to cause brain tumors ........................................................................... 33 Aspartame begins to generate medical complaints ............................................................................... 34 Aspartame byproducts: chemicals so toxic they threaten the environment ........................................... 35 Aspartame implicated in neurological disorders and diseases ............................................................... 36 Flying blind with aspartame: pilots cant see their instrument panels .................................................... 37 Aspartame and Alzheimers disease ...................................................................................................... 37 Aspartame and heat ............................................................................................................................... 38 Aspartame and cancer ........................................................................................................................... 38 Protein power authors change stance on aspartame ............................................................................. 39 Outraged at the FDA .............................................................................................................................. 40 Spinning the truth about aspartame ....................................................................................................... 41 Where to learn more about aspartame .................................................................................................. 43 Acesulfame-K, yet another articial chemical sweetener ........................................................................... 44 The FDA says the tumors are perfectly normal.................................................................................... 44 Sample quotes from cancer experts letters on acesulfame-K testing ................................................... 45 The Sucralose question ............................................................................................................................. 46 The inside story on the FDA and the politics of saccharin ......................................................................... 48
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Avoid all chemical sweeteners and use stevia instead .............................................................................. 49 Sugar alcohols ........................................................................................................................................... 50 Summing up the good and the bad of sugar alcohols like xylitol ............................................................... 51 Hydrogenated Oils and Trans Fats .............................................................................................................. 52 The FDA drags its feet on requiring food manufacturers to list trans fats on labels .................................. 53 Foods containing hydrogenated oils .......................................................................................................... 55 Hydrogenated oils, trans fats and heart disease ....................................................................................... 56 Hydrogenated oils, trans fatty acids and cancer ........................................................................................ 58 Hydrogenated oils, trans fatty acids and diabetes ..................................................................................... 59 Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids as brain poison ......................................................................... 59 Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids interfere with the absorption of essential fatty acids (EFAs) ......... 60 Hydrogenated oils, trans fatty acids and obesity ....................................................................................... 61 How trans fats cause such damage to the health of the human body ....................................................... 61 Why food manufacturers use hydrogenated oils in their products ............................................................. 63 The low-fat theory falls apart: many fats are good for you ......................................................................... 64 The margarine scam and hydrogenated oils ............................................................................................. 66 A frightening look at how margarine is actually made ................................................................................ 67 How much hydrogenated oil and trans fatty acids are you eating? ........................................................... 69 Corruption and politics in the soybean oil industry .................................................................................... 70 The soybean industry suppresses studies and attacks tropical oils .......................................................... 71
GROCERY WARNING - PART 3 Grocery Products That Are Dangerous To Your Health ................................................................................. 75 Suffering from soft drinks ............................................................................................................................. 75 The damaging health effects of soft drink consumption ............................................................................ 75 Soft drink consumption and marketing statistics ........................................................................................ 76 Soft drink portions: Super size me! ............................................................................................................ 76 Diet soft drinks dont cause you to lose weight .......................................................................................... 76 A closer look at the health problems linked to soft drink consumption ....................................................... 77
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Articial chemical sweeteners ................................................................................................................ 77 Soft drinks, phosphorus, meat and osteoporosis ................................................................................... 77 When you drink soft drinks, you are peeing away your bones ............................................................... 79 High phosphorus content combines with high meat consumption to spell disaster ............................... 80 Calcium supplements alone wont solve this problem ............................................................................ 81 Milk is not the answer to calcium deciency .......................................................................................... 82 Soft drinks make you ugly by altering your facial bone structure ........................................................... 83 The truth about caffeine, a highly addictive, psychoactive drug ............................................................. 85 Caffeine consumption results in even more calcium loss ...................................................................... 86 Aluminum cans may present yet another health danger for soft drinks ................................................. 87 Soft drink companies spin the science to claim their products are harmless ......................................... 88 Five simple steps to rebalance the mineral content of your body .......................................................... 90 Heavy bacon consumption .......................................................................................................................... 91 Toxic chemicals found in bacon and processed meats .............................................................................. 91 The sodium nitrite found in bacon and processed meats .......................................................................... 92 Clinical evidence shows sodium nitrite to be carcinogenic ........................................................................ 93 Carcinogens caused by high heat cooking ................................................................................................ 94 How to protect yourself from the sodium nitrite found in bacon and other processed meats .................... 95 Summing up the health risks of eating bacon ............................................................................................ 96 The questionable safety of beef, chicken and pork products ...................................................................... 97 Illegal use of carcinogenic hormones in cattle ........................................................................................... 98 The feeding of dead, ground up diseased cows to other cows ................................................................ 100 Cows are fed chicken litter ....................................................................................................................... 101 Machinery squeezes the meat out of a cow carcass ............................................................................... 102 The beef industry pressures government agencies to back off ............................................................... 103 Most American consumers are exposing themselves to too much beef .................................................. 104 Organic beef makes a difference in your health ...................................................................................... 105 The Problem With Dairy Products ............................................................................................................. 106 Cows milk is great nutrition for baby cows .............................................................................................. 106
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The homogenization of milk alters the structure of the milk fats .............................................................. 108 Homogenized milk fats blamed for cardiovascular disease ..................................................................... 109 Homogenized milk fats are metabolic disruptors ..................................................................................... 110 Cows milk, human milk, and cross-species consumption ....................................................................... 111 Human breast milk is rich in brain-building substances ........................................................................... 112 Cows milk results in higher mortality rates in infants ............................................................................... 113 Differences between cows milk and human milk ..................................................................................... 114 Cows milk and asthma / sinus congestion .............................................................................................. 115 Most conventional doctors dont consider cows milk to be a cause of asthma ...................................... 116 Cows milk and constipation ..................................................................................................................... 117 Many people dont know theyre constipated ........................................................................................... 118 Cows milk and diabetes .......................................................................................................................... 119 The media avoid talking about cows milk and diabetes to protect advertising revenues ........................ 120 The problem with feeding cows milk to human babies ............................................................................ 121 Cows milk contributes to cardiovascular disease in infants .................................................................... 121 The use of dangerous hormones in cows milk ........................................................................................ 123 Government regulatory agencies refuse to test cows for hormone effects .............................................. 124 Monsanto harasses organic milk producers who state their milk is made without hormones ................. 125 The contamination of cows milk with pus ................................................................................................ 126 Whats wrong with organic milk ............................................................................................................... 128 The 30-day no-dairy diet .......................................................................................................................... 128 Monosodium Glutamate ............................................................................................................................ 129 What is MSG? .......................................................................................................................................... 129 The food industry, politics, prots, and MSG ........................................................................................... 131 The toxicity of MSG ................................................................................................................................. 133 MSG shown to damage the liver, the brain, the circulatory system and more ........................................ 134 If MSG is found in seaweed, why is it so dangerous to your health? .......................................................135 MSG damages your health with small doses, taken over time ................................................................ 136 MSG and asthma ..................................................................................................................................... 137
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MSG and seizures ................................................................................................................................... 138 MSG and violence ................................................................................................................................... 138 MSG and hyperactivity / Attention Decit Hyperactivity Disorder ............................................................ 139 MSG and heart problems / cardiovascular disease ................................................................................. 140 MSG and cancer ...................................................................................................................................... 140 MSG and endocrine system disorders that lead to obesity ..................................................................... 142 MSG shown to cause severe reproductive problems and endocrine disorders ....................................... 144 The link between MSG and obesity ......................................................................................................... 145 Why MSG may be whats preventing you from losing weight .................................................................. 146 MSG and diabetes ................................................................................................................................... 147 MSG, Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease ............................................................................................ 148 MSG, child nutrition and baby foods ........................................................................................................ 149 MSG risks are even higher for low-carb dieters ....................................................................................... 151 Food manufacturers hide MSG in other ingredients ................................................................................ 152 Veggie burger manufacturers insist yeast extract is 100 percent natural! ............................................. 154 Corruption at the FDA favors food companies, not the safety of consumers ........................................... 155 Foods containing MSG ............................................................................................................................ 156 Food products almost always containing MSG ........................................................................................ 156 Symptoms of MSG syndrome: how to tell if youre affected .................................................................... 157 Childrens MSG symptoms ...................................................................................................................... 157 The use of MSG in foods served to children at public schools ................................................................ 158 The heavy use of MSG in restaurants ..................................................................................................... 158 Why Chinese restaurants are actually the best place to avoid MSG ....................................................... 159 The inside story of corruption and politics in the MSG cover-up ............................................................. 160 The MSG industry engages in scientic fraud to promote their product .................................................. 162 The FDA: key players in the MSG cover-up ............................................................................................ 162 The real reason why the FDA wants to make sure consumers keep eating MSG ................................... 164 The health damaging effects of MSG may take time to produce symptoms ........................................... 165 The FDA makes sure the prejudiced Glutamate Association is invited to all inquiries ............................. 166
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The MSG industry attacks doctors and authors who speak out against MSG ........................................ 167 The blood-brain barrier explanation offered by the MSG industry is proven false ................................... 168 How MSG creates extraordinary prots for pharmaceutical companies .................................................. 169 Where to learn more about MSG ............................................................................................................. 170 Reliance on Manufactured, Processed Foods ........................................................................................... 171 Most packaged foods are overpriced ....................................................................................................... 171 Lack of phytonutrients / phytochemicals .................................................................................................... 171 What are phytochemicals? ...................................................................................................................... 172 Phytochemicals offer extraordinary protection against disease ............................................................... 175 Phytochemicals are just beginning to be discovered ............................................................................... 181 Phytochemicals act in combination, not in isolation ................................................................................. 183 Few people eat enough phytochemicals ................................................................................................. 184 Phytochemicals are not vitamins ............................................................................................................. 185 Foods that contain phytochemicals ......................................................................................................... 186 How to get phytochemicals into your diet ................................................................................................ 186 Chlorella and spirulina .......................................................................................................................... 187 Jenny Lee Supergreens ....................................................................................................................... 188 The Ultimate Meal ................................................................................................................................ 188 Sea vegetables .................................................................................................................................... 189 Other phytochemical supplements .......................................................................................................... 190 Putting It All Together ................................................................................................................................. 190 Things To Avoid: ....................................................................................................................................... 191 Things to add to your diet ........................................................................................................................ 192 New habits ................................................................................................................................................. 192
SHOPPING FOR GROCERIES How to use the shopping list ...................................................................................................................... 195 Foods To Buy: ............................................................................................................................................ 196
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Food products to avoid .............................................................................................................................. 212 Cleaning out your pantry ........................................................................................................................... 220
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Do I have do follow everything in this manual to be healthy? .................................................................... 223 The full spectrum of health: its your choice ............................................................................................. 223 You have the power to determine your health outcome ........................................................................... 224 Why isnt this information more widely publicized? ................................................................................... 225 What qualies you to be an expert in nutrition and health? ....................................................................... 227 I currently have heart disease. How soon can I reverse my disease if I follow your advice? .................... 229 How serious is the health risk from these metabolic disruptors anyway? ................................................. 231 Poison vs. metabolic disruptors ............................................................................................................... 232
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INTRODUCTION
Get ready to transform your diet into something thats healthier and more powerful
This guide is for people who want to avoid chronic disease: cancer, leukemia, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimers disease, depression, heart disease, arthritis, CFS, and many more. In this book, youll learn how these diseases are actually promoted by toxic ingredients in everyday foods and groceries. Youll also learn how to identify those ingredients and avoid them for life. Once you start putting this information into practice, youll start noticing positive results in as little as ve days. Your health progress will accelerate in the subsequent weeks and months, and you will continue to notice signicant progress in your health year after year. In the sections that follow, Ill present: All of the major metabolic disruptors -- ingredients that cause serious disease in the human body. Ill name each one, offer evidence to prove their dangers, and show you what to look for on food labels. Easy shopping lists: Ill present two shopping lists: foods to avoid and foods to buy. For each food, Ill discuss why it should be avoided or purchased, and Ill provide my best recommendations for keeping it all as simple as possible. Questions & Answers: Here, Ill answer the most common questions about the dangers of certain foods and ingredients. Theres a wealth of wisdom here. Its a lot to cover, so lets get started.
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carbohydrate-controlled diet is essential for a healthy heart, healthy gastrointestinal system, and a healthy balance of hormones. The focus of this book is not weight loss, but rather overall health of the bodys systems. Both of these books (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and Life Without Bread) offer important information to the public about the negative health consequences of eating rened carbohydrates. Taken together, they show that rened carbohydrates promote the most serious diseases we are experiencing in society today. Dr. Elson Haas, M.D., author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition explains, There has been a shift in this century away from the healthful consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and complex carbohydrates -- the starches and ber foods -- toward a diet of more rened carbohydrates and simple sugars that are implicated in a variety of diseases, among them obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and tooth decay. It is possible that this type of diet (high in simple and rened sugars, high in fats, and low in complex carbohydrates) may be inuencing the incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, anemia, skin problems, kidney disease, and cancer. Thats quite a list, but as you will see in the evidence that follows, it is well justied. The consumption of rened carbohydrates absolutely and inarguably promotes diabetes, cancer, heart disease, mental disorders and other problems. The evidence is quite simply overwhelming.
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People who follow a carbohydrate-controlled diet can actually reverse their diabetes. As Paul Pitchford states in the book Healing with Whole Foods: Eating rened white sugar and other simple sugars contributes to diabetes because in excess, these sugars convert to fat in the body. When a low-fat diet based on complex carbohydrates such as unrened grains, vegetables, and legumes is followed for several weeks, approximately 80 percent of diabetics can stop taking insulin and diabetic pills altogether, and the remaining 20 percent can reduce their intake.
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Whats really interesting is the skyrocketing rates of diabetes that occur following the introduction of rened carbohydrates to isolated populations who previously subsisted on traditional foods found in their immediate environment. In every documented case, diseases like diabetes soon follow the introduction of carbohydrates to the local populations: In the Pacic Islands, diabetes is unheard of among those people who eat traditional diets. But when they abandon their native foods and adopt Western ways, diseases of all types surface. One of these new diseases is diabetes. An interesting example of this has occurred on the island of Nauru in the South Pacic. For centuries the people, subsisting on a diet composed primarily of bananas, yams, and coconuts, lived totally free from diabetes. Phosphate deposits discovered on the island brought an inux of wealth and a change in lifestyle. The islanders replaced the coconut and yams they had eaten for centuries with foods made from rened our, sugar, and processed vegetable oils. The result was the emergence of a never before seen disease -- diabetes. According to the World Health Organization up to one-half of the urbanized Nauru population age 30-64 are now diabetic. - Bruce Fife, N.D., The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil
Syndrome X
Theres another term for the diabetes-like disease that results from eating too many rened carbohydrates: Syndrome X. Syndrome X is characterized by elevated levels of insulin in the blood. Heres the link between dietary carbohydrates and Syndrome X, as explained in The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Syndrome X is a term used to describe a set of cardiovascular risk factors, including glucose or insulin disturbances, high blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels, elevated blood pressure, and android obesity. The underlying metabolic denominator in Syndrome X is elevated insulin levels. There is little doubt about what contributes to these elevations: an elevated intake of rened carbohydrates. An increased intake of simple sugars leads rst to hypoglycemia and later to diabetes. The results from a recent twenty-ve-year study add support to the contention that prolonged consumption of rened sugars, and the resulting elevations in insulin, eventually leads to Type II diabetes. ...Both obesity and diabetes are strongly linked to the Western diet, presumably due to the negative effects that saturated fats and rened carbohydrates have on internal mechanisms that control blood sugar levels.
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not only the storage of fat in fat cells, but it also increases appetite so that the person both gains weight and feels unnaturally hungry at the same time. Thus, rened carbohydrates are a double whammy for people trying to lose weight and avoid obesity and diabetes. A person who eliminates their consumption of rened carbohydrates reverses these biochemical effects, usually within a matter of weeks. Without excess insulin in the bloodstream, their bodies no longer store fat and actually begin to release it by converting it back into blood sugar. These steady levels of blood sugar are now more evenly regulated, and the person feels less hungry than when they were overeating carbohydrates in the rst place. Not only is most of our obesity related to carbohydrate excess, says Dr. Russell Blaylock in Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, ...but many of the diseases that plague our society, such as cancer, arthritis, and cardiovascular diseases, are also related to this unhealthy practice.
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The consumption of carbohydrates is especially dangerous to the mental balance of children and adolescents: According to multiple university investigations, the serious increase in behavioral problems in children and adolescents is directly connected to diet and poor nutrition. The present day diet of adolescents consists mainly of junk food. Pathological aggressiveness in children and teenagers is related to the consumption of the rened sugars found in sweets and sodas. Jails are a showcase for this behavioral problem. In one of them a dietary experiment was carried out where sweets, cookies, and sodas were exchanged for fruit, fresh vegetables, and water. Aggressiveness and other behavior problems among the prisoners diminished remarkably in just a couple of weeks! This simple, inexpensive experiment clearly demonstrates the relationship between behavioral problems and diet. - Francisco Contreras, M.D., Health in the 21st Century One study that followed nearly 4,000 incarcerated juveniles also showed a strong reduction in violent behavior when rened carbohydrates were removed from their diet: In the largest study, 3,999 incarcerated juveniles were studied over a period of two years. This study limited the dietary revisions to replacing sugary soft drinks with fruit juices, and high-sugar snacks with non-rened carbohydrates snacks (for example, replacing a candy bar with popcorn). When the 1,121 young men on the sugar-restricted diet were compared to the 884 on the control diet, there were signicant differences. In the sugar-restricted group, suicide attempts were reduced one hundred percent; the need for restraints to prevent self-injury was reduced seventy-ve percent; disruptive behavior was reduced fortytwo percent; and assaults and ghts were reduced twenty-ve percent. - Michael T. Murray N.D., The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine And yet most parents keep feeding their children hundreds of pounds of sugar each year in the form of breakfast cereals, toaster tarts, candies, soft drinks, cookies, and many more. But the parents dont have to let their children engage in this sort of eating behavior: All too often we hear that carbohydrates are the only thing this child will eat. But no child is born with the desire to consume bread, sugared cereals, pastries, candy, fruit, and soft drinks. These treats are given to them, usually by doting parents, but these initial offerings begin a lifelong addiction that can cause many health problems. Sooner than you would think, children begin to crave only non-nutritious foods. - Wolfgang Lutz, M.D., Life Without Bread
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We have touched upon the idea that increases in insulin can result in decreases in the production of growth hormone. Too much insulin results in depressed levels of anabolic hormones, such as growth hormone. ...Anyone who adopts a low-carbohydrate nutritional program for any appreciable length of time will notice many changes in her body that can be attributed partially to increases in growth hormone. Over time, fat is reduced and muscle begins to increase, even in the absence of exercise. With exercise, the increase in muscle is very rapid. Fingernails grow faster and hair growth responds as well. While one may not regain hair that is lost, usually the receding hairline stops. The rate of tissue repair and overall quality of the skin also improves. Women who suffer greatly on high-carbohydrate diets often report remarkable improvements in both comfort and mood when they choose to avoid these processed carbs. The explanation for this probably rests in the nutritional deciencies caused by eating rened carbohydrates. As mentioned above, rened carbohydrates deplete the body of the B vitamins, and B vitamins are extremely important for healthy hormonal balance in women, especially during menstruation. Supporting information from The Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements by Michael T. Murray, N.D. explains: Diet appears to play a major role in the development of PMS. Compared to symptom-free women, PMS patients consume 62 percent more rened carbohydrates, 275 percent more rened sugar, 79 percent more dairy products, 78 percent more sodium, 53 percent less iron, 77 percent less manganese, and 52 percent less zinc. The rst step in addressing PMS is limiting the consumption of rened sugar and decreasing or eliminating milk and dairy products.
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Thats what rened, processed carbs deliver: everything from anxiety to violence. Maybe its time to stop buying that white bread, huh? What Ive presented here is just a summary of the links between the consumption of rened carbohydrates and modern disease. It offers you just a hint of the considerable scientic evidence now supporting this link. But how can rened carbohydrates be so bad for you in the rst place? What, exactly, are food manufacturers doing to the substances that makes them so unhealthy? To understand the answer to that question, allow me to take you on a quick tour through a food factory.
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In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, author Weston Price adds: In the production of rened white our approximately eighty per cent or four-fths of the phosphorus and calcium content are usually removed, together with the vitamins and minerals provided in the embryo or germ. With this in mind, dont be shocked to learn that the very rst thing our food factory does with a truckload of wheat is to physically remove the bran and the germ. These parts of the grain are sent into a waste pile, and are not intended for human consumption. Humans are taught to consume the carbohydrate-rich endosperm, which is separated from the whole grain and then ground into a ne powder. This ne powder lacks virtually all of the nutrients contained in the original grain. It is missing as much as 98 percent of the original mineral content and it contains none of the healthy oils found in the whole grain. In fact, this white powder is so lacking in vitamins that federal law requires the food factory to add in tiny amounts of certain, isolated vitamins such as B3 to make sure this food doesnt cause obvious nutritional deciency diseases like beriberi.
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Consider this: food factories must deliver the food ingredients that are desired by manufacturers. And manufacturers, in turn, must deliver the foods and grocery products that are desired and purchased by consumers. Thus, it is ultimately consumers who decide which products succeed in the marketplace and how grains are processed. When consumers purchase products made with rened white our, they are in a sense of voting for this production process. The more consumers purchase foods that contain healthy oils, ber, and whole grains, the more food factories and food manufacturers will retool their processes to meet that consumer demand. For example, one well known breakfast cereal manufacturer in the United States announced in late 2004 that it would switch to whole grains for its entire cereal line. So when you look at the big picture here, you cant blame the food manufacturing companies for creating products that consumers demand. Its a consumer-driven marketplace, after all, and the only way to alter the manufacturing practices of these companies is to educate people and shift demand. The other answer is that rened carbohydrates have a much longer shelf life than the wholegrain products because whole-grain products contain oils that very quickly go rancid on the shelf. Products that have a shortened shelf life are not protable to stock because they have an increased risk of going bad and being returned for credit. Thus, it is also in the nancial interests of food manufacturing companies to create ingredients that dont go rancid.
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Its not only calcium that gets depleted when people consume rened carbohydrates and sugars, either: chromium -- an important mineral for regulating blood sugar levels -- is also depleted: The amount of chromium in foods decreases with processing. The widespread tendency toward increased consumption of highly processed foods, particularly rened sugar, which stimulates urinary losses of chromium, may result in a marginal intake of chromium and depletion of tissue chromium stores. - Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Textbook of Natural Medicine So what happens to the health of a person who consumes a large quantity of rened carbohydrates and suffers from the resulting vitamin and mineral deciencies? They exhibit a vast array of symptoms and disorders: At least thirteen B vitamins are found in our food. Some may be lacking in many Americans diets because of the consumption of rened our products, sugar, coffee, and alcohol, which can deplete B vitamins. Deciency symptoms include fatigue, irritability, nervousness, depression, insomnia, loss of appetite, sore (burning) mouth or tongue, and cracks at the corners of the mouth. Some deciencies may also reduce immune functions or estrogen metabolism; other potential problems are anemia, especially from vitamin B12 or folic acid deciency, constipation, neuritis, skin problems, acne, hair loss, early graying of the hair, increased serum cholesterol, and weakness of the legs, to name a few. - Elson Haas, M.D., Staying Health With Nutrition Whats really fascinating is to look at the history of rened grains and their effects on human health. When rened grains rst became popular, entire nations suffered from mysterious diseases that were actually a result of nutritional deciencies related to vitamins and minerals lost during the milling of grains. From Sugar Blues: The process of moving from whole grains through the various stages of ground meals had taken several centuries in the West, thus biological deterioration of the people was gradual. However, such deterioration was visited upon the Orient very rapidly. Polished white rice was new, modern, rened, and civilized. It was accepted wherever modernization was vogue. In its wake, it brought sudden outbreaks of new symptoms. Eventually, these new symptoms were labeled beriberi, after the Senegalese word for weakness. After the introduction of rened white sugar and white polished rice on Japanese battleships, beriberi began plaguing the sailors the way scurvy had the British. Instead of going back to eating unpolished rice like the peasants, the Japanese navy adopted western rations like those of the British and German navies. Meat and condensed milk, among other things, were added to the diet of the Japanese sailors. It was only imperialist colonizers, supersalesmen for European technology, and the great scientic geniuses of the West who thought of beriberi as a mysterious plague to be conquered by modern science. At rst it was classied as a tropical disease. It was studied as a parasitic infection. Among the suggested therapies for beriberi were quinine, arsenic, bloodletting, cold douches, steambaths, sunbaths, strychnine, and massage. In Java in
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the 1890s, the Dutch army, Dutch missionaries, and colonial administrators were aficted with a veritable epidemic of beriberi. They slept under mosquito netting and sprayed each other with carbolic acid and were careful not to let the dirty natives touch them on the way to church, but nothing seemed to protect them from beriberi. - William Duffy, Sugar Blues Conventionally trained modern doctors seem no wiser, by the way. When they see a pattern of symptoms that should clearly be identied as an obvious nutritional cause (such as Attention Decit Disorder), they rarely consider the dietary causes and, instead, proceed to write prescriptions in order to mask the symptoms of the disease. Its sort of like seeing that your yard needs water because its turning brown and then going to the hardware store to buy green paint rather than simply watering your lawn. Conventional medicine still doesnt get it when it comes to the causative links between rened foods and disease. In this way, they are even more ignorant than Japanese peasants in the 1800s who at least knew to eat whole grain rice if they were to stay healthy.
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Sodium Nitrite
Virtually all bacon is packaged and treated with an ingredient known as sodium nitrite. This ingredient, which is used by the meat industry as a color xer (it adds a healthy looking red color to the meat in the package) and as protection against botulism, is widely known to result in the creation of nitrosamines in the digestive system. Nitrosamines are highly carcinogenic chemicals that promote cancer in the human body. In fact, nitrosamines are used by laboratory researchers to induce diabetes or cancer in lab rats for the purpose of conducting experiments. Heres an account of one experiment in which researchers used very low doses of nitrosamines to give rats bladder cancer in order to test whether saccharin would accelerate that cancer: In addition to the ndings of carcinogenicity... saccharin has also been shown to induce bladder cancer in various other types of studies, including one in which pellets were implanted in rodent bladders... in which rats were fed saccharin after their bladders had rst been primed by local instillation of very low doses of a nitrosamine-type carcinogen. - Samuel S. Epstein, The Politics of Cancer Revisited On the dangers of nitrosamines, this book goes on to say: Nitrosamines are a large group of chemicals, most of which are carcinogenic, producing tumors in a wide range of organs in a wide range of test animals. ...Nitrosamines are considered to be major human carcinogens ...due to the fact that they can be easily and rapidly synthesized by the interaction of common precursors, nitrites or oxides of nitrogen and amines, in a process called nitrosation. Through this process of nitrosation, an innocent-sounding ingredient like sodium nitrite becomes a cancer-promoting carcinogen in your digestive tract. Over the last decade, there has been growing interest in the possibility that nitrosamines and other N-nitroso compounds may be a major class of universal carcinogens responsible for a substantial number of human cancers, Epstein says. ...they can be simply and rapidly synthesized by a process called nitrosation, both in the environment and in the body, from two types of common and extensively distributed compounds, amines and nitrites. The fact that these nitrosamines cause cancer isnt even debated. Author Michael T. Murray, N.D.,
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writing in The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, states, Preservatives such as sodium benzoate, nitrates, nitrites, and sultes work to prevent spoilage primarily by checking the growth of microorganisms. All of these preservatives have come under attack recently. In the case of nitrates and nitrites, these compounds are known carcinogens. Later in the same book, he adds, Stay away from cured meats such as bacon, pastrami, and some types of sausages; these foods are rich in compounds that can lead to the formation of cancer-causing compounds known as nitrosamines. In Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life, author Russell Blaylock writes, For decades, food scientists and cancer specialists have known that nitrates and nitrites were converted in the human stomach into powerful cancer-causing substances called nitrosamines. Yet, tons of these preservatives are still added to luncheon meats, hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats... For a more technical view, take a look at the comments on this subject by author John Boik in Cancer & Natural Medicine, who says, Epidemiological evidence suggests that dietary and environmental factors play a signicant role in the incidence of stomach cancer. Dietary intake of nitrites (found in high amounts in processed or cured meats) is suspected as a causative factor. So what happens when you consume sodium nitrite in processed, packaged meat products, year after year? To nd the answer, lets look at how the dietary consumption of sodium nitrite affects children.
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during pregnancy of meats cured with sodium nitrite has been associated with development of brain tumors in the offspring. (14) Recent case-control studies have conrmed the risks of cancer from consumption of hot dogs. Eating many hot dogs by children, as well maternal hot dog consumption during pregnancy, has been shown to be associated with brain cancer and leukemia in children. (15,16,17) Bunin, et al. studied children who were diagnosed with brain cancer before age six, between 1986 and 1989. Of 53 foods and beverages and three alcoholic beverages consumed by mothers during pregnancy, only hot dogs were associated with an excess risk of childhood brain tumor. (18) Sarusua and Savitz studied 234 childhood cancer cases in Denver and found a strong association between the consumption of hot dogs and brain cancer. Children born to mothers who consumed hot dogs one or more times per week during pregnancy had approximately double the risk of developing brain tumors. Children who ate hot dogs one or more times per week were also at higher risk of brain cancer. In addition, children who ate hot dogs and took no vitamins, which retard the formation of N-nitroso carcinogens, were more strongly associated with both acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and brain cancer. (19) Sarusua and Savitz concluded: The results linking hot dogs and brain tumors (replicating an earlier study) and the apparent synergism between no vitamins and meat consumption suggest a possible adverse effect of dietary nitrites and nitrosamines.(20) Peters, et al. studied the relationship between the intake of certain foods and the risk of leukemia in children from birth to age 10 in Los Angeles County between 1980 and 1987. The researchers found that children who ate 12 or more hot dogs per month had approximately nine times the normal risk for developing childhood leukemia. A strong risk for childhood leukemia also existed for those children whose fathers intake of hot dogs was 12 or more per month. (21) Peters, et al. concluded: Our results provide evidence for an association between consumption of hot dogs and risk of childhood leukemia. Adjustments for all factors thought to be potential confounders did not affect these associations. Independent risks were associated with both childrens and fathers consumption...The ndings, if correct, suggest that reduced consumption of hot dogs could reduce leukemia risks, especially in those consuming the most. (22) These ndings are of particular signicance considering a 38 percent increase in the incidence of brain and nervous system cancers in children from 1973-1991. (23) Brain tumors account for about one in ve childhood cancers. (24) C. CLAIM FOR CATEGORICAL EXCLUSION A claim for categorical exclusion is asserted pursuant to 21 CFR 25.24 (a) (11).
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D. CERTIFICATION The undersigned certies, that, to the best knowledge and belief of the undersigned, this petition includes all information and views on which the petition relies, and that it includes representative data and information known to the petitioner which are unfavorable to the petition. This petition is submitted by: Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. Michael Deutsch, Esq. Legal Director, Center for Constitutional Rights, N.Y.
REFERENCES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Lijinsky, W., Epstein, S., Nitrosamines as environmental carcinogens,Nature 225(5227):21-12, 1970. Anonymous. Nitrates and nitrites in food, Medical Letter on Drugs & Therapeutics. 16(18):75-6, 1974 Issenberg, P. Nitrite, nitrosamines, and cancer, Federation Proceedings, 35(6):1322-1326, 1976. IARC, Monograph on the evaluation of the carcinogenic risk of chemicals to humans: some N-nitroso compounds, 17:36-38, 136-144, 1978. Ibid. Issenberg, P., Nitrite, nitrosamines, and cancer, Federation Proceedings 35 (6):1322-1326, 1976. IARC, Monograph on the evaluation of the carcinogenic risk of chemicals to humans: some N-nitroso compounds. Fraser, P. Nitrate and human cancer: A review of the evidence. Int. J. Epidemiol, 9:3-11, 1980. Reed, P. I. The role of nitrosamines in cancer formation. Biblthca. Ntur. Dieta. 37:130-8, 1986. Craddock, V.M. Nitrosamines, food and cancer: assessment in Lyon, Fd. Chem. Toxic., 28(1):63-65, 1990. Preston-Martin, S. et al. N-nitroso compounds and childhood brain tumors: A case-control study. Cancer Res. 1982; 42:5240-5. Bunin, G.R., et al. Relation between maternal diet and subsequent primitive neuroectodermal brain tumors in young children. N. Eng. J. Med., 3 29-536-41, 1993. Bunin, G.R., et al. Maternal diet and risk of astrocytic glioma in children: a report form the childrens cancer group (United States and Canada), Cancer Causes & Control. 5:177-87, 1994. Preston-Martin, S., et al. N-nitroso compounds and childhood brain tumors: A case- control study. Bunin, G.R., et al. Maternal diet and risk of astrocytic glioma in children. Sarasua, S., Savitz, D. Cured and broiled meat consumption in relation to childhood cancer: Denver, Colorado (United States), Cancer Causes & Control, 5:141-8, 1994. Peters, J., et al. Processed meats and risk of childhood leukemia (California, USA) Cancer Causes & Control 5:195-202, 1994. Bunin, G.R., et al. Maternal diet and risk of astrocytic glioma in children. Sarasua, S., Savitz, D. Cured and broiled meat consumption in relation to childhood cancer. Ibid. Peters, J., Preston-Martin, S., London S., et al. Processed meats and risk of childhood leukemia (California, USA) Ibid. Reis, L. et al., Maternal diet and risk of astrocytic glioma in children, 177-87.
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In response to this petition, the FDA had absolutely nothing to say. No discussion, no new labeling requirement, not even a public hearing. The issue was simply swept under the rug. Those who know how the FDA operates are not at all surprised by this action. These days, both the FDA and the USDA focus their attention primarily on protecting industry prots, not the public health. Corporate prots garner a much higher priority than consumer safety, as is obvious to anyone who is familiar with the consistent actions of both agencies in this area. But the USDA wasnt always like that. In fact, they tried to ban sodium nitrite decades ago...
Action Item:
Avoid sodium nitrite. Look for it on labels of all packaged meat products.
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Aspartame
Of all the chemical sweeteners that are still legal (cyclamates were banned years ago), aspartame by far has the worst record. It is my opinion, after reviewing an enormous amount of medical and research literature, that monosodium glutamate, aspartame, and other excitotoxin dietary additives pose an enormous hazard to our health and to the development and normal functioning of the brain. To continue to add enormous amounts of excitotoxins to our food is unconscionable and will lead to suffering and ruined lives for generations to come. The civilized world, especially the United States, has become the largest experimental laboratory in history. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Aspartame is used as an articial sweetener in a wide variety of foods and beverages. Its usually proudly proclaimed right on the label as Nutrasweet. To truly understand the story of aspartame, however, you have to look behind the label and examine the history of this sweettasting chemical. Aspartame was accidentally discovered in 1969 by James Schlatter, a biochemist trying to nd a cure for stomach ulcers. He just happened to lick his thumb, the story goes, and was impressed by the sweetness of the chemical. Russell Blaylock, author of Excitotoxins, goes on to explain what happened next: From this serendipitous discovery was born a business that would reap $736 million in sales for the NutraSweet Company in 1988 alone. By 1989, G.D. Searle & Company, the manufacturer of NutraSweet, had reached a protability that put it ninth on the Fortune 500 list. Despite concerns over the safety of this new sweetener, including brain tumor induction in experimental animals, seizures, precipitation of headaches, and an adverse effect on the developing brain, the FDA approved its use as an articial sweetener. Sales began to grow immediately. The NutraSweet company spent over $60 million on advertising alone during its rst three years. NutraSweet hit the market at just the right time. Americans had become weight conscious and were looking for a sugar substitute, and it replaced the recently outlawed cyclamate. Soon, it surpassed saccharin in sales. In fact, NutraSweet played a large role in making the soft drink business one of the fastest growing businesses in what had been a stagnant enterprise. Americans were guzzling diet colas under the mistaken belief that sugar consumption was the primary cause of obesity. But they were unaware of the serious health effects of excess aspartate consumption.
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Flying blind with aspartame: pilots cant see their instrument panels
One group of professionals who are quite aware of the dangers of aspartame (and its potential to alter nerve system function) are pilots. A number of individuals had their driver or pilot licenses revoked or suspended because of aspartame-associated impaired vision, convulsions, or confusion -- depriving them of employment, says Dr. J.H. Roberts in Aspartame - Is It Safe? He goes on to report the following: A young Air Force pilot told the Senate hearing held on November 3, 1987 that he suffered a grand mal seizure while consuming up to one gallon of an aspartame beverage daily. There had been no recurrence over the ensuing two years of abstinence. Nevertheless, he was permanently grounded because of the diagnosis of an idiopathic partial seizure disorder. That account just scratches the surface, however: One group of professionals most concerned about aspartame usage is airline pilots. In 1988, the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network installed a private hot line to receive inquiries from pilots who are in jeopardy of losing their ying licenses because of seizure episodes from the use of aspartame. Since 1988, more than six hundred calls have been made to the condential hot line. One caller noted that after just two cups of NutraSweetened hot chocolate, a pilot experienced blurred vision so severe he was unable to read instruments on his panel and very narrowly avoided a tragic landing. Safely on the ground, he related his story to the coworkers in his ofce. Two of them recounted similar symptoms experienced after brief exposure to aspartame. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
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The primary conclusion of the study is as follows: The time-course study of Trp-Trp nitrosation showed the production of at least two mutagens: a potent but unstable mutagenicity was seen at very short nitrosation times and a more stable but weaker effect was obtained after more than 60 min of nitrosation. Not only the absolute specic mutagenicity but also the nitrite dependence of the nitrosation reaction and the stability of the nitroso product must be taken into account in determining the risk posed by endogenous nitrosation of foods in the human stomach.
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Reports in the medical literature suggest that in susceptible people, consuming aspartame may result in such symptoms as mood disturbances, sleep disturbances, headaches, dizziness, short-term memory loss, fuzzy thinking, and inability to concentrate. And whats more ...is that the excitotoxic effect may permanently damage the brain and nervous system. The possible risks to your brain simply arent worth it. Our advice -- if you must have more sweetness than a tiny amount of honey, use the natural sweetener stevia.
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Its just like the title of the book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Really, thats the title of a book about the public relations tactics of food and medicine companies. With all of this evidence available, to suppose that aspartame is safe for human consumption is ludicrous. To stand behind its promotion to pregnant women and young children is nothing less than criminal. It goes without saying that the breast-feeding mother needs to avoid aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and other chemicals known to induce brain damage. Just as these substances cross the placental barrier, they cross into the breast milk and the blood-brain barrier, passing directly into your babys brain to inict its subtle damage. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
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Using sweetspeak, Farrell gave an example of how Nutrasweet now responds to the question: How do you know aspartame is safe? The answer: Aspartame was discovered nearly 30 years ago. Since that time, hundreds of people in our company and elsewhere around the world -- people with families like yours and mine -- have devoted themselves to making sure consumers can be condent of their choice when they choose the taste of Nutrasweet. People have looked at our ingredient in every which way possible, and we encourage that because we want consumers to be comfortable when they choose Nutrasweet. That has been our commitment for nearly three decades, and it will always be our commitment. You can feel condent choosing products that contain our ingredient, but if you dont, you have other choices. Now if thats not serious spin, nothing is. Additional supporting quotes about the health consequences of aspartame For your continued exploration on this topic, here are some additional quotes on aspartame from the books Ive mentioned here. Additional resources are offered below. Finally, the articial sweetener, aspartame contains multiple breakdown products and primary components (phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol) that have been shown to increase free-radical production. For example, formaldehyde and formic acid formed from the breakdown of methanol, have been shown to severely damage DNA, most likely by such a mechanism. Another component, aspartic acid, is an excitotoxin that increases free-radical generation within the brain, especially the parts related to memory and ne coordinated movements. ...In addition, the metabolic breakdown of aspartame yields about a dozen toxic compounds, some of which have been associated with cancer induction and alteration of brain function. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life Scientic testing to establish aspartames safety prior to FDA approval resulted in brain tumors and grand mal seizures in rat studies, and depression, menstrual irregularities, constipation, headaches, tiredness, and general swelling in human test groups. Furthermore, during human evaluations, two of the subjects underwent cancer operations. - Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home Before it is absorbed, aspartame also produces formaldehyde and methyl alcohol in the intestines. The quantity depends on the amount of sweetener taken in sodas or in cooked food. Formaldehyde and methyl alcohol have been cited as producing eye-nerve damage -- to the point of even causing blindness. - Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D., Water for Health and Healing
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Other side effects of Nutrasweet include headaches, depression, bladder irritation and feeling as if there is a continual need to urinate. The latter symptoms are often thought to be involved with a urinary tract infection. Visual symptoms appear to be more common with aspartame than MSG and some cases of blindness have been reported. The relationship of these visual symptoms with the methanol content of Nutrasweet has been suggested as a cause. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex We are now aware of enough credible scientic research detailing the dangers to memory, sleep, and mood, and much more that may be suffered by some people using this sweetener that we discourage its use. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan The problem with aspartame lies in overconsumption and the fact that phenylalanine alone (without its companion amino acids) is not a normal part of the diet. Large doses of phenylalanine are toxic to the brain and can cause mental retardation and seizures in people with phenylketonuria (PKU), a genetic disorder. For others, the sweetener may cause chemical changes in the brain that could contribute to headaches, depression, mood swings, high blood pressure, insomnia, and behavior problems. In addition, it could cause your appetite-control center to malfunction, so your diet drinks could be causing more harm than good. Aspartame may also cause birth defects and is not recommended for use by pregnant women. - Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home
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Heres a collection of quotes from several cancer experts commenting on the safety testing of acesulfame-K testing. These quotes are reprinted from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) website:
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In summary, although acesulfame-K might be less dangerous to you than aspartame, it remains a substance that should only be used sparingly. I agree with Eades advice on this chemical sweetener: In the same general chemical family as saccharin, acesulfame potassium (or, as its usually called, acesulfame K) is potentially fraught with the same problems relative to cancer causation and the stimulation of insulin release. Thus far no human data has emerged (just as in the case of saccharin) to indict the sweetener as carcinogenic. Like saccharin, its noncaloric and stable in liquids and in cooking. Is it safe to use? In small amounts infrequently, probably so. But once again, our advice to Protein Power LifePlan Dilettantes and Hedonists who might choose to use acesulfame K is to use it sparingly! - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan As it turns out, the real test of acesulfames safety is being conducted right now -- on the entire population. It will take years, perhaps decades, for the true long-term results of acesulfame consumption to become apparent. In the meantime, my advice is to avoid acesulfame and stick to more natural sweeteners as discussed below.
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Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of The No-Grain Diet and Mercola.com, states the following about sucralose safety: Few human studies of safety have been published on sucralose. One small study of diabetic patients using the sweetener showed a statistically signicant increase in glycosylated hemoglobin (Hba1C), which is a marker of long-term blood glucose levels and is used to assess glycemic control in diabetic patients. Research in animals has shown that sucralose can cause many problems in rats, mice, and rabbits, such as: Shrunken thymus glands (up to 40 percent shrinkage) Enlarged liver and kidneys. Atrophy of lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus Increased cecal weight Reduced growth rate Decreased red blood cell count Hyperplasia of the pelvis Extension of the pregnancy period Aborted pregnancy Decreased fetal body weights and placental weights Diarrhea
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In the year 2000, the FDA, under even more pressure from industry, dropped saccharin from its ofcial list of substances that may cause cancer. Now, food products using saccharin dont have to print the cancer warning. By simply redening saccharin, the FDA, which once sought to ban this chemical, has essentially proclaimed the ingredient to be perfectly safe!
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You can read my articles on stevia, which will include recommendations on sources, at: http://www.newstarget.com/stevia.html
Sugar alcohols
When it comes to ingredients that replace the sweetness of sugar, food manufacturers frequently turn to a class of sweeteners known as sugar alcohols. These sugar alcohols include ingredients like maltitol, glycerin, mannitol and xylitol. There are some annoying side effects associated with these sugar alcohols, and at least some slight indications of possible health risks from their heavy consumption. From Food Additives: MALTITOL and MALTITOL SYRUP Obtained by the hydrogenate from maltose (see). A candidate for a sugar substitute, it has 90 percent the sweetness of sugar and does contain calories. It has the potential for use in confections and candy coatings. In a cancer study in rats, changes were observed in the adrenal gland, which included increased incidence of both benign and malignant tumors of the adrenal glands in both sexes and a slight increase in breast cancer in female rats. The FAO-WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives did not consider these cancers to be related to treatment. The Committee, however, recommended that the information database on adrenal overgrowth and tumors associated with polyols and other poorly absorbed carbohydrates (see both) be reviewed that the mechanisms of appearance of these lesions and their toxicological signicance be assessed at a future meeting. XYLITOL Formerly made from birch wood, but now made from waste products from the pulp industry. Xylitol has been reported to have diuretic effect but this has not been substantiated. It is used in chewing gum and as an articial sweetener. It has been reported to sharply reduce cavities in teeth but costs more than sugar. The reason is that, unlike sugar, it doesnt ferment in the mouth. Therefore, it is sold for foods that stay in the mouth for some time, such as gum, toffee, and mints. FDA preliminary reports cited it as a possible cancer-causing agent. Xylitol is now used in eleven European countries and the United States and Canada. It is also used in large amounts in the Soviet Union as a diabetic sweetener. Xylitol was evaluated by the FAO-WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives in Geneva, April 11-20, 1983. On the basis of submitted data, the committee accepted that the adverse effects observed in British studies, in which cancer-prone rats were fed large doses of xylitol, were species-specic and could not be extrapolated to humans. Therefore, no limit on daily intake was set and no additional toxicological studies were recommended. It can cause stomach upsets when taken in large amounts. It may be of benet to diabetics since xylitol metabolization does not involve insulin. These ingredients come from natural sources (yes, even wood pulp is a natural source), but they have a chemical structure that delays digestion and conversion into blood sugar in the human body. In other words, they they wont raise your blood sugar in the way that rened carbohydrates do. They do have another side effect, however: in some people, they can contribute strongly to diarrhea or atulence. This occurs because even though these sugar alcohols are not converted to carbohydrates, they do pass through your large intestine where your intestinal ora can consume
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the sugar alcohols and emits various gases as a byproduct of their own metabolism. The results can be extraordinary in terms of the volume of gas coming out of your own body, a phenomenon that has given rise to the phrase riding the low-carb rocketship. In my experience, xylitol is especially potent as rocket fuel, which is a shame because I think xylitol is a wonderful alternative sweetener that offers protection against dental cavities as a positive side effect. Out of these sugar alcohols, xylitol is also the most expensive, which is one reason why you rarely see it used in food products like food bars. Whether these sugar alcohol sweeteners create a atulence effect in your own body is something that you may wish to experiment with, preferably over a weekend when youre not planning any social engagements. When you eat sugar alcohols, these side effects dont appear until half a day later, and when you stop eating sugar alcohols, you have a one-day lag time before your system returns to normal. So proceed carefully when consuming these ingredients. Aside from these rather annoying side effects, sugar alcohols dont seem to impose any additional health risks to your system. From the research Ive conducted, that makes them far healthier than any of the articial chemical sweeteners weve previously discussed. If you nd that your system is somehow immune to the gaseous effects of sugar alcohol, these natural sweeteners would be an excellent dietary choice. And even though I still believe that stevia is the best alternative sweetener of all (with none of the rocketship affects of sugar alcohols, by the way) sugar alcohols like xylitol have a far better taste, according to most people. Xylitol tastes just like sugar, and it has a similar consistency as well.
Summing up the good and the bad of sugar alcohols like xylitol
Lets review the upside of sugar alcohols: No chemicals Not articial Low glycemic index The downside of sugar alcohols: Diarrhea Flatulence Can be expensive (xylitol) Long-term safety for human consumption not demonstrated Taste almost like sugar Fewer calories than sugar
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The word of wisdom on sugar alcohols, according to Eades, is once again caution! Heres the scoop: Sugar Alcohols. These products, such as xylitol, sorbitol, and maltitol, retain the sweettaste-bud stimulating properties of sugars, but their altered structure prevents their absorption from the intestinal tract. As a consequence, eating them wont make your blood sugar rise or spur a release of insulin. Their lack of effect on the blood sugar and insulin metabolism has placed them in the forefront as sweeteners for diabetic products, such as candies and chewing gum. In small doses, they appear to be harmless. As is our usual recommendation with articial sweetening agents, the bywords are small doses and used occasionally, and for very practical reasons: since theyre not absorbed and pass through with the intestinal contents, they can cause whats termed an osmotic diarrhea if consumed in large quantities. Use sparingly! - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan
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And yet few people truly realize the degree of harm these hydrogenated oils and trans fats are causing to their bodies: The articially produced trans fats, formed by the process called partial hydrogenation, pollute the cell membranes and interfere with their function. Their toll on health is vast, including: lowering HDL (the good cholesterol), raising LDL (the bad cholesterol), raising overall cholesterol, decreasing reproductive functions, lowering the nutritional quality of breast milk, weakening the immune system, stiffening the cell membranes, interfering with the production of good essential fats from dietary fat, contributing to the development of obesity, and, most importantly, directly contributing to the development of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. These fats occur in all sorts of prepackaged and processed foods, from margarine and salad and cooking oils to bakery goods, chips, crackers, and candies. Look for the words partially hydrogenated on the label and avoid any food containing these fats. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan
The FDA drags its feet on requiring food manufacturers to list trans fats on labels
Yet despite the well established negative health consequences of consuming hydrogenated oils, the FDA, in typical FDA fashion, dragged its feet for years, refusing to require food companies to list trans fats on their labels. Finally, under mounting pressure from health advocates and organizations like CSPI and Public Citizen, the FDA gave in and will start requiring food companies to list trans fat content in January, 2006. Given the overwhelming evidence of the link between trans fats and diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes -- all of which will be discussed in more detail -- you might wonder what sort of bizarre justication the FDA could come up with for protecting the food industry by not requiring the listing of trans fats on these nutrition facts labels years ago. Hold on to your seat, because here it is: The FDA has decided that since trans fats should be entirely avoided in the diets of all human beings, there is consequently no recommended daily allowance of trans fats. Thus, manufacturers of foods cannot list the trans fat content of their food products in any meaningful way on the label, according to the FDA.
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Thats FDA logic for you. But to truly understand the magnitude of the harm being perpetrated by the FDA in allowing hydrogenated oils to continue to be used in the food supply, youll need to examine all of the diseases and disorders that have been linked to hydrogenated oils and trans fats: Breast cancer (rates triple for women who eat hydrogenated oils) High levels of bad cholesterol Coronary heart disease and heart attacks Cancer Prostate disease Diabetes Obesity Immune system suppression Low birth weight infants (when mothers eat hydrogenated oils) Abnormal sperm production Decreased testosterone in men Essential fatty acid (EFA) deciencies Brain function disorders All of this adds up to an estimated 30,000 premature deaths each year in the United States alone from the consumption of hydrogenated oils. Thats nearly ten times the casualties of the 9/11 attack, and yet theres no outcry, no wave of new laws to ban this ingredient, and nothing but silence from the FDA. The problem with all this is trans fats are everywhere in the food supply. If you eat rened foods or processed foods, its very difcult to avoid trans fats or hydrogenated oils:
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Heres an expanded list of the types of foods and grocery products that contain hydrogenated oils and trans fats: Shortening Margarine Peanut butter Cookies Crackers Fried foods Milk Milk products Salad dressings Potato chips Corn chips Graham crackers, animal crackers, cookie sandwiches Granola Tortillas Doughnuts Pie crusts Cinnamon rolls and most pastries Cake mixes, mufn mixes Biscuit mixes All fried foods, whether frozen or not
Action Item:
Look for partially-hydrogenated oils on food labels. Strictly avoid any product that lists partially-hydrogenated oils as one of its ingredients.
Lets take a closer look at the diseases known to be caused by hydrogenated oils and trans fats:
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In 1993, doctors at Harvard Medical School found that women who ate four or more teaspoons of margarine a day had a 50 percent greater risk of developing heart disease, compared to women who ate margarine only rarely (Harvard School of Public Health 2002). Growing public awareness regarding the dangers imposed by trans fats has prompted a reduction in their consumption. An example of the benets of eliminating trans fatty acids from the diet comes by way of a study released from The Netherlands. An average 2.4 percent drop in trans fatty acid consumption prompted a 23 percent decrease in coronary deaths and saved, it is speculated, about 4,600 lives. - Disease Prevention and Treatment by the Life Extension Foundation Most of the research on hydrogenated oils and trans fats focuses on the damage to the heart and cardiovascular system. This is where these toxic fats do the most harm. Based on the research, they are more harmful than even saturated animal fats (like hamburger fat or butter) which have long been blamed for promoting cardiovascular disease. One of the primary causes of heart disease in this country is bad fats. This doesnt just apply to saturated fats (which really arent bad for you unless you eat too much of them). It applies much more to the trans fatty acids found in hydrogenated oils and margarine-type products, which are bad for you in any amount. These partially saturated, man-made fats were designed not to go rancid, but they have been found to actually cause heart disease. - Earl Mindell, Ph.D., Prescription Alternatives The primary mechanism blamed for the destructive effects of trans fats on the heart is that it raises the bad cholesterol while lowering the good cholesterol, creating a double whammy negative impact on the health of your blood: While they may lack saturated fat, hydrogenated products such as margarine can be even more dangerous to your heart. Three studies have found that trans-fatty acids can raise cholesterol even higher than saturated fat ...and the damage isnt only to your arteries. - Bill Gottlieb, New Choices in Natural Healing Recent research indicates that these synthetic fats raise cholesterol levels in the arteries much the way saturated fats do. Thus trans-fatty acids not only increase the likelihood of a variety of metabolic disorders including arthritis and cancer, but also contribute to heart disease. In the United States, 95 percent of trans-fatty acid ingestion is from eating margarine and shortening. - Paul Pitchford, Healing With Whole Foods
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Trans-fatty acids raise your LDL cholesterol at the same time that they lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, pushing both of these blood fats in the wrong direction. A Boston research team found that people with the highest levels of trans-fatty acids in their diet had two and a half times the risk of heart attack as those who ate the least amount of this articial fat. - Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., The Omega Diet Whats clear from all this is that anyone who has suffered from a heart attack, or who is at risk of heart attacks or stroke, should clearly stay away from hydrogenated oils and trans fats for life. There is no safe level for human consumption, no matter what your state of health. Because heart disease is only the beginning...
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This same mechanism -- the abnormal alteration of cell membranes -- is also visited in Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer, which discusses the ability of trans fats to promote breast cancer: Trans fatty acids, which are not found in nature, incorporate themselves into the cell walls, altering the cell membranes and making them more permeable. This can lead to abnormal hormonal extracellular stimuli and the eventual promotion of breast cancer. - Donald Yance and Arlene Valentine, Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer When it comes to trans fats and cancer, the links are well documented and widely known in the scientic community. They are hardly known at all by the general public, however, and there is no public education campaign that seeks to warn consumers about the cancer risk of consuming hydrogenated oils.
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of the nerves break down, and the brain fails to perform optimally. And we may fall prey to depression, mood disorders, fuzzy thinking, sleep disturbances, and the whole host of brain and nervous system diseases that we mentioned earlier. Eating trans fats is like eating brain poison. We urge you to avoid them wherever you can. We feel strongly enough about the dangers of trans fats to your brain and to your general health to make this trans fat avoidance recommendation across the board. It will take a while -- sometimes only weeks but often six months or longer -- for your dietary changes to make a noticeable impact on your brain and nerve tissues. It takes time to replace the poor-quality fats that may now be lurking in your tissues with good-quality ones. But one of the great things about the design of the human body is that it constantly renews, and because of this miracle, with good nutrition you can in time rebuild a healthier body and brain. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan The brain poison problem isnt only limited to people who consume trans fats -- it also involves their infants! A mother who breastfeeds her child needs to be especially careful to avoid trans fats in her diet: Women who consume large amounts of trans-fatty acids (as found in margarine and other hydrogenated products, for example) have lower amounts of essential fatty acids in their breast milk. Hydrogenated fats are not adequate for optimum development of brain tissue. The milk of women who eat large amounts of trans-fatty acids (margarine, fried foods, shortening, etc.) contains harmful amounts of trans-fatty acids that are passed on to her child. In fact, trans-fatty acids are transmitted through the placenta into the fetus, impairing formation of the brain tissue. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
Hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids interfere with the absorption of essential fatty acids (EFAs)
The hydrogenation process has a number of unwanted consequences, however. One rarely discussed fact is that it reduces the essential fatty acid content of oils, both omega6 and omega-3. Untreated soybean oil, for example, contains about 8.5 percent omega-3 fatty acids. When partially hydrogenated, its omega-3 content drops to 3 percent. Another drawback of hydrogenation is that it rearranges the molecular bonds on fatty acids, transforming them into look-alike molecules called trans-fatty acids. Trans-fatty acids behave in many ways like saturated fat, including raising your LDL (bad) cholesterol. But they are even more destructive than saturated fat because they also lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, pushing both of these blood fats in the wrong direction. To make matters worse, they take the place of EFAs in cell membranes, interfere with their metabolism, and usurp some of the enzymes needed to create hormone-like substances called eicosanoids that are involved in many aspects of human physiology. - Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., The Omega Diet
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One of the problems with consuming hydrogenated oils is that they compete with the absorption and utilization of healthy oils -- omega-3 oils and other EFAs -- in your body. In other words, the more hydrogenated oils you have in your system, the less your body can absorb healthy omega-3 oils. You are probably well aware that you need healthy oils in your body: monounsaturated oils like omega-3 fatty acids. Thats why these are called essential fatty acids: theyre essential to your good health! Without them, your body will begin to suffer from a number of metabolic disorders. And the more hydrogenated oils you eat, the less your body can absorb the healthy EFAs -- the good fats that you need!
How trans fats cause such damage to the health of the human body
Since trans fatty acids are unnatural fats, the body hasnt developed a specic way to deal with them, so it treats them like real fats and just does the best it can. Unfortunately, thanks to a sinister quirk of biochemistry, the body tends to incorporate trans fats into the lipid bilayer in preference to good-quality unsaturated fats, especially during times of essential-fatty-acid deciency. Since most of us have a deciency in omega-3 essential fats -- especially if were eating a diet containing a lot of trans fats -- and a surplus of omega-6 fats, what we end up with is a lipid bilayer made of trans fats and omega-6 fats, a real recipe for disaster. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan
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But to really understand the health danger posed by hydrogenated oils and trans fats, lets go right to one of the worlds foremost experts on the physiological impact of dietary oils, Dr. Mary Enig, a research scientist at the University of Maryland. She has studied processed foods, hydrogenated oils and trans fats for many years, publishing a steady stream of scientic papers that describe the various physiological alterations that occur when people consume these unhealthy fats. As she describes: Trans fatty acids lower HDL (the good cholesterol) in a dose-response fashion; that is, the more trans fats you eat, the lower your HDL will be; they raise LDL (the bad cholesterol); they raise lipoprotein(a) -- in fact, trans fatty acids are one of the only substances known for sure to raise the levels of this mysterious, but dangerous, lipoprotein; and they raise total cholesterol in the serum by 20 to 30 milligrams per deciliter. And thats not where the damage stops. Trans fats interfere with the reproductive system, too, by decreasing the levels of testosterone in male animals, increasing the numbers of abnormal sperm. In the female, elevated levels of trans fats decrease the amount of cream in human breast milk, reducing the overall quality available to nourish the growing infant, which correlates with low birth weights. They also inhibit the function of a number of enzymes, in particular the delta-6 desaturase enzyme, one of the enzymes responsible for conversion of both omega-3 and omega-6 fats into their more unsaturated products, as well as altering the activities of the enzyme system that metabolizes toxic chemicals, carcinogens, and medications; and to add insult to injury, they even weaken the immune response while they increase the production of free radicals. ...Trans fats wreak even more havoc by decreasing the response of the cells to insulin. In other words, trans fats contribute to the development of insulin resistance directly as well as causing hyperinsulinemia. They hamper proper function of the insulin receptor by changing the uidity of the lipid bilayer and other cellular membranes and even cause alterations in the size of adipose tissue cells, their number, and their fatty-acid composition, further worsening the effects of essential-fatty-acid deciency. As you can see from this list, trans fatty acids cause a plethora of damaging effects throughout the body. We -- or, more precisely, food manufacturers -- have made a real Faustian bargain: weve traded a longer shelf life for a shorter human life. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan
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Part of the underlying metabolic cause for the destructive effects of consuming hydrogenated oils may be due to the oxidation that occurs in the human body: Oxidation in our body of such substances as the fat molecules, particularly from ...eating other oxidized fats such as hydrogenated oils and rancid oils, causes the genesis of free radicals, unstable molecules that can lead to cellular and tissue irritation and damage, which leads to chronic inammation, especially in the vascular lining. Excess free radical formation comes from a variety of chemical reactions in the body and is the biochemical basis of many diseases, such as atherosclerosis, heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, senility, and probably even cancer. - Elson Haas M.D., Staying Healthy With Nutrition On the subject of hydrogenated oils and trans fats, at least, all doctors (informed doctors, anyway) agree. There is no doctor anywhere in the world who would recommend the consumption of hydrogenated oils unless he were utterly isolated from the last decade of nutritional science: Once you realize what horrible products trans fatty acids are and how widespread is their use in processed foods, it becomes easy to understand why most people see such an improvement in their health no matter what kind of diet they go on. There is no physician, nutritionist, or dietitian I know who recommends a diet high in trans fatty acids. - Michael Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan
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Hydrogenated oils are made by taking a vegetable oil like soybean oil and bubbling it at high temperature in the presence of a catalyst -- usually nickel. The resulting oil is solid at room temperature and now qualies as a saturated fat. Worse yet, it now contains trans fatty acids: Also hazardous to health are the so-called trans-fatty acids, found in margarine and other synthetic foods. Created in the laboratory, trans-fatty acids result when manufacturers add hydrogen to unsaturated vegetable oil. Due to the conguration of the new chemical bonds -- different from those found in most naturally occurring saturated fatty acids -- trans-fatty acids are even more stable than those of saturated fatty acids. The advantage is longer shelf life without spoiling for processed foods. The disadvantages, according to a spate of recent studies, include risk for coronary heart disease in excess of that associated with saturated fat. - Andrew L. Stoll, M.D., The Omega-3 Connection Virtually all of the research on trans fats shows this dangerous form of fat is far worse for your cardiovascular health than even saturated animal fats. In other words, butter is healthier for you than margarine, because margarine is made primarily from hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats. Hydrogenation turns liquid oils, such as corn, soybean, sunower, sesame, and cotton, into a semisolid shortening or margarine. (The harder the fat, the more trans fats it contains.) This process changes a cis (a benecial fat) to a nonfunctional form (a trans fat) that can no longer participate in prostaglandin production. - Disease Prevention and Treatment, by the Life Extension Foundation
The low-fat theory falls apart: many fats are good for you
Two decades ago, the scientic consensus was that all fats were bad for you, especially animal fats. But over the last 25 years, the research is clearly showing that you cant lump all these fats into the same group. Some fats -- rened, processed fats, namely -- are extremely dangerous to your health. Other fats, such as EFAs (essential fatty acids) and even some saturated fats like coconut oil, are very good for you. The pattern Ive noticed is that raw fats from plant sources are the healthiest, while any rened, processed fats are likely to be extremely bad for you. Thats why I always recommend people eat avocados, nuts, and coconut oil. These are extremely healthy sources of fat. Macadamia nut oil is one of the best. Heres a passage from The South Beach Diet that discusses the differences in good fats vs. bad fats: To avoid saturated fats in the diet, a special type of polyunsaturated fat became popular: the trans fats. They are the partially hydrogenated oils found in so many commercial products, including cakes, cookies, and margarines. Unfortunately, they are as dangerous, or more dangerous, than saturated fats. They increase bad cholesterol levels and are associated with heart attacks and strokes.
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An ever-growing body of research documents that many fats do not have the adverse effects of the saturated and trans fats. In fact, evidence is building that the unsaturated, non -- trans fats are actually good for us. Where Mediterranean oils are used abundantly, heart attack and stroke rates are very low. The most impressive diet study ever reported was the Lyon Heart Study. Here, the mostly monounsaturated fat, canola oil, (with omega-3 fat as well) was used in a spread by onehalf of the patients studied. All those in the study had already had heart attacks, but those receiving the good fat had a 70 percent decrease in subsequent heart attacks. - Arthur Agatston, M.D., The South Beach Diet Also, its important to note that it is the processing of the oil that matters as much (if not more) as the nature of the original oil. Many natural plant-based oils, such as canola oil, are considered rather healthy in their natural form. But by hydrogenating them, food producers transform them into highly toxic substances. As a consumer, you have to be especially wary of the labeling claims on oil-based foods and actually read the ingredients. Just because something is made with canola oil doesnt mean its healthy: Margarine and shortening, furthermore, contain hydrogenated polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Hydrogenation is an extremely harmful process that creates an immune-damaging synthetic fat, a type of trans-fatty acid described earlier that -- to the dismay of conrmed margarine users -- has also been found to actually elevate blood cholesterol. Most margarines made from soy and safower oils and sold as natural are also hydrogenated and just as harmful as any other margarine. However, margarines made by other processes are now becoming available. Even though some of these margarines contain preservative chemicals, colorants, and other questionable ingredients, they are to be preferred over hydrogenated margarines. These margarines are identied by checking the ingredients for the absence of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils; they are often sold in certain supermarkets and health food stores. - Paul Pitchford, Healing With Whole Foods And from The Protein Power Lifeplan: Trans fatty acids are everywhere, and, unfortunately, there are no labeling laws on the books at this time forcing food manufacturers to divulge the amount of these fats in their products. You can be sure, however, that if you buy any kind of vegetable oil or vegetableoil product that doesnt have a dark colored bottle and that doesnt require refrigeration after its been opened, youve got a trans fat. Commercially made salad dressings, for example, contain a signicant amount of trans fatty acids. If you look at the label, you will often see that its made of soybean oil, not a particularly bad oil in its fresh state, but one that food manufacturers love to partially hydrogenate and convert to a plastic food. According to Mary Enig, approximately 70 percent of the soybean oil consumed in this country has been partially hydrogenated. That means that if you see soybean oil as an ingredient in a product youre eating, the odds are that its been hydrogenated. The hydrogenation process converts soybean oil from having no unnatural fats to a substance containing over 53 percent chemically altered fats.
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From the point of view of the food manufacturers, they long for the days when the public was ignorant of the health impact of hydrogenated oils and they could protably manufacture and distribute these yellow tubs of spreadable heart disease. Hydrogenated oils are well liked by food manufacturers because they store well, they ship easily, and they have an impressive shelf life: Little did Americans know that along with the highly touted corn oil margarine and allvegetable shortening came trans-fatty acids. Liquid vegetable oils present food producers with a number of problems. Corn oil cant be spread on bread, for instance, and it makes a poor pie crust. It is also prone to oxidation by light, air, and heat, especially after the rening process has robbed it of its natural antioxidants and phytochemicals. Hydrogenation was the answer. Through modern alchemy, vegetable oil could be heated, exposed to a metal catalyst such as nickel or copper, and transformed into a more plastic, less perishable fat. This fat could then be added to convenience foods, allowing them to be shipped in warm, humid weather and parked on the grocery shelf for months on end. By 1979, the American public was consuming an estimated 10 billion pounds of fat and oil per year, of which 60 percent was partially hydrogenated oil. - Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., The Omega Diet This trend continued well into the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, it was only in the 1990s that the research about the dangers of trans fats started to gain some attention. Even then, it was only well known in certain research circles. By the mid 90s, the media was slowly starting to run with the story, and consumer demand caused some margarine makers to introduce products made without hydrogenated oils.
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What comes out of the deodorizer, while at least it can be approached without gagging, is still not quite the tempting substance commercial margarine is supposed to be. Its grey, its sticky, and its far, far too chunky. The grey gloop is poured into another vat, metal shavings are clunked in before it, then the vat is screwed shut and high-pressure hydrogen gas is sprayed in. The fats are boiled and compressed in there, they react with the nickel and hydrogen, and when nally the ordeal is over and the top taken off, the lumps are gone. Theres more. Beef dripping, lard and herring fat dont cost very much, but if at this stage they could be diluted with something even cheaper, even more easy to get in quantity than pigs fat, then the cost of producing the margarine would drop even lower. This extra substance is waiting in another vat in the factory, right next to the one where the de-lumping took place. Its milk -- of a sort. By government regulations there are two main grades of milk in most countries: Grade A, which is fresh, checked and suitable for drinking; and a lesser Grade B, which ordinary consumers dont usually see, but which being slightly older, or having a bit more bacteria in it than is best, is used for condensed milk, commercial cakes, and baby milk mixtures. The milk thats waiting to be mixed in with the fat in the margarine factory is the second kind, or even one grade below that. Its not fresh; in fact its going sour. Even though its already been pasteurized once, the factory engineers have to give it another pasteurizing heat treatment to get some of the worst stuff out of it. After that its strained, ltered and poured in with the waiting fat. It seems it would take a genius to make a palatable product out of this soapy and starchfull mixture of grey sour milk and animal fat. First some color is added, something to cover over the vile grey. Normal yellow dyes wouldnt work, because the grey is so deep that it would keep on poking through. Extra-strong dyes based on sulfur-rened coal tars are used instead. Then a stiing strong avorer is mixed in to make it taste like something other than the miscellaneous lard, other fats and old milk it is. Then vitamins-because all this processing has made it nutritiously almost valueless. The result of all these labors is then compressed, cooled, scraped, cut into long blocks, cut into smaller blocks, and nally dropped into plastic tubs. Theres something else. Back at the beginning a little sunower oil is sometimes mixed in. Thats not because its especially needed, and usually not because theres enough to make any difference, but rather so the designers can have something suggestive of sun-kissed meadows and open spaces to print on the cover. Even the French Academy of Sciences that sponsored the original stuff had their doubts. The award for the rst margarine was granted in 1869, but eleven years later the Academy decreed that it couldnt be used in government cafeterias: it was, they said, too revolting on the palate.
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Thats margarine: the stuff youve probably been buying and eating for a couple of decades because the health experts said it was good for you. The soybean industry loved to hear that, of course, since it is precisely soybean oil that is the cheapest source of vegetable oil that can be hydrogenated and formed into margarine-shaped containers. So what can you do to protect yourself from margarines containing hydrogenated oils? Just follow the action item here:
Action Item:
Absolutely avoid purchasing any margarine product that contains any partially hydrogenated ingredient.
How much hydrogenated oil and trans fatty acids are you eating?
Today, Americans are consuming from 5 to 10 percent of their calories as trans-fatty acids. Studies show that amounts greater than 5 percent of your calories can have negative health consequences. It is alarmingly easy to reach this level because any product that has the words partially hydrogenated on the label contains trans-fatty acids. This includes most types of margarine, shortening, articial cheese, deep-fat fried foods, commercial baked goods, prepared mixes, snack food, and crackers. You can reach the 5 percent level simply by eating one doughnut for breakfast, a small order of fries with lunch, a teaspoon of margarine at lunch and dinner, and two cookies for dessert. - Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., The Omega Diet If you eat manufactured foods, it is frighteningly easy to expose yourself to hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids. Remember: the acceptable level of exposure is zero, so the only way to be safe is to utterly and completely avoid hydrogenated oils. For many people, their primary source of trans fats is margarine. Making a change in your margarine is easy: just buy margarine products that have no trans fats and read the ingredients labels to make sure they have no hydrogenated oils. But theres an even better solution that I highly recommend: buy yourself some extra virgin, coldpressed, non-rened coconut oil and use that as a buttery spread. Its already the right texture, and its both delicious and healthy. To add butter avor, simply squeeze some Smart Squeeze butteravored liquid on top of the coconut oil. This is, by far, my best recommendation on buttery spreads. People need more coconut oil in their diets, and you will nd that coconut oil exhibits amazing properties when it comes to stabilizing blood sugar and satiating your hunger. You are hopefully already avoiding all the baked cookies and crackers made with hydrogenated oils. But it can be difcult if you enjoy any signicant portion of manufactured foods:
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A person eating a doughnut for breakfast (3.19 g of trans fatty acids), a small order of French fries with lunch (3.43 g), two teaspoons of margarine on bread with dinner (1.24 g), and two cookies for a snack (1.72 g) would ingest a total of 9.58 g of trans fatty acids, enough to negate the serum cholesterol-lowering effects of a decrease in saturated fat of 10 percent of total energy intake. - Joseph E. Pizzorno,N.D., and Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Textbook of Natural Medicine In fact, the vast majority of consumers in our modern societies are consuming toxic levels of trans fats and hydrogenated oils on a daily basis. They get it at every meal! Theres the hydrogenated oil margarine at breakfast, the baked crackers with vegetable oil shortening at lunch, the aky pastry dessert at dinner, and of course potato chips, corn chips and toaster pastries during all the snacks in between. All of these foods contain hydrogenated oils. As always, I strongly recommend you read the ingredients labels before purchasing any food item. Thats the only way to be sure youre avoiding hydrogenated oils. Of course, youll also have to watch out at restaurants. This subject warrants a lengthy discussion on its own, but the short version is that practically every salad dressing, baked pastry, butter spread, and dessert is going to contain hydrogenated oils and trans fats. The restaurant industry loves hydrogenated oils: theyre cheap, they add calories and ll to foods, and they have an extended shelf life. What more could a restaurant hope for?
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The coconut and palm oil industries were, of course, devastated by the coup pulled off by the soybean industry. Suddenly, consumers were running scared from all tropical oils. Even today, that view persists. When I recommend non-rened, extra virgin coconut oil to people, they look at me in amazement. Doesnt that cause heart disease? Some myths live on, even if people who eat margarine dont. In reality, coconut oil prevents heart disease. Its made of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) which boost metabolism and are metabolized like complex carbohydrates in the human body (rather than being easily stored in your own fat tissues like animal fats are). Coconut oil is, Im convinced, a miracle-class food, and I eat it nearly every day. My breakfast isnt complete without coconut oil, and I think its an ideal source of healthy fats.
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Fast food restaurants were also caught up in the no palm oils frenzy and they eventually switched to vegetable oils rather than lard as the ingredient in which to fry french fries and other fast foods. As a result, the trans fat content of fast foods skyrocketed, greatly increasing the risk of heart disease for fast food customers. The restaurants, meanwhile, claimed they were protecting the health of their customers by switching to these healthful vegetable oils. Of course, the idea that fried foods could be healthful is rather ridiculous in the rst place. Fast food restaurants use the same frying oil, over and over again, which multiplies the acrylamide content of fried foods (acrylamides are highly toxic, cancer-promoting chemicals that form when foods are cooked at very high temperatures) while simultaneously introducing dangerous levels of trans fats into these fried foods. These foods can only be accurate characterized as promoters of disease, not as any sort of healthful food. In the end, of course, the soybean oil pushers are going to lose. The arrival of the Internet and companies like Truth Publishing (the publisher of this manual) are helping to spread the word about dangerous ingredients like hydrogenated oils. In fact, the ASA has already lost the war, as they are steeped in a defensive retreat even today. People in the know arent buying margarine products containing hydrogenated oils anymore. The tide is, indeed, turning.
Action Item:
Dont eat anything made with hydrogenated oils or partially-hydrogenated oils, period.
You can read more about hydrogenated oils at: http://www.newstarget.com/hydrogenated_oils.html
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When you drink soft drinks, you are peeing away your bones
To put it simply, if you frequently drink soft drinks, you are initiating a series of biochemical causeand-effect events that result in you literally peeing your bones away. As explained in The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphate content of soft drinks is very high, and they contain virtually no calcium. It appears that increased soft-drink consumption is a major factor that contributes to osteoporosis. The link between soft-drink consumption and bone loss is going to become even more signicant as children who were practically weaned on soft drinks reach adulthood. Soft-drink consumption in children poses a signicant risk factor for impaired calcication of growing bones. Since there is such a strong correlation between maximum bone-mineral density and the risk of osteoporosis, the rate of osteoporosis may reach even greater epidemic proportions. The severe negative impact that soft drinks exert on bone formation in children was clearly demonstrated in a study that compared fty-seven children with low blood calcium levels, aged eighteen months to fourteen years, to 171 matched controls (children with normal calcium levels). The goal of the study was to assess whether the intake of at least 1.5 quarts per week of phosphate-containing soft drinks is a risk factor for the development of low blood calcium levels. Not surprisingly, a strong association was found. Of the ftyseven children who had low blood calcium levels, thirty-eight (66.7 percent) drank more than four bottles (12 to 16 ounces per bottle) of soft drinks per week, but only forty-eight (28 percent) of the 171 children with normal serum calcium levels consumed as much soft drink. For all 228 children, a signicant correlation between serum calcium level and the number of bottles of soft drink consumed each week was found. The more soft drinks consumed, the lower the calcium level. These results more than support the contention that soft-drink consumption leads to lower calcium levels in children. This situation that ultimately leads to poor bone mineralization, which explains the greater risk of broken bones in children who consume soft drinks. Although this study focused on children, the same is true for adults: the more soft drinks you consume (diet or otherwise), the lower your levels of calcium. These soft drinks literally leach calcium right out of your bones. Loss of calcium and bone mass, not surprisingly, leads directly to osteoporosis and other bone disorders: The skeletal system suffers most from calcium deciency. Teeth minerals are more stable, though there is a possibility of poor dentition with insufcient calcium. Tooth loss, periodontal disease, and gingivitis can be problems, especially with a high phosphorus intake, particularly from soft drinks. All kinds of bone problems can occur with prolonged calcium deciency, which causes a decrease in bone mass. Rickets in children, osteomalacia (decreased bone calcium) in adults, and osteoporosis (porous and fragile bones) can occur when calcium is withdrawn from bones faster than it is deposited. Fractures are more common with osteoporosis -- almost eight million yearly in the United States are related to this prevalent nutritional deciency disease
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The typical American diet provides too much phosphorus and not enough calcium, leading to reduced body storage of calcium; thus, many of the problems of calcium deciency discussed earlier may develop. Phosphorus and calcium can compete for absorption in the intestines. High consumption of meats or soft drinks increases phosphorus intake and may contribute to this imbalance. The ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the diet is 1:1. In recent years, the increased consumption of soft drinks, which are buffered with phosphates, has been a concern. There may be up to 500 mg. of phosphorus per serving of a soft drink, with essentially no calcium. - Elson Haas M.D., Staying Healthy With Nutrition
High phosphorus content combines with high meat consumption to spell disaster
As the statement above describes, most Americans diets are too high in phosphorus to begin with. If you add diet soft drinks, your phosphorus consumption skyrockets. This only accelerates the loss of calcium from bones and the subsequent bone disorders that naturally result. ...one of the leading contributors to osteoporosis in the U.S. is carbonated soft drinks containing phosphorus. Research has shown a direct link between too much phosphorus and calcium loss. If youre guzzling down a couple of zzy soft drinks a day, youre most likely creating bone loss. Our other source of excessive phosphorus in the U.S. is eating too much meat. The average American gets more than enough protein, so for most of us it can only help to cut down on our meat consumption. - Earl Mindell, Ph.D., Prescription Alternatives Dr. James Balch, author of the A to Z Guide To Supplements, supports the same line of thinking: The average American diet of meats, rened grains, and soft drinks (which are high in phosphorus) leads to increased excretion of calcium. Consuming alcoholic beverages, coffee, junk foods, excess salt, and/or white our also leads to the loss of calcium by the body - James F. Balch, M.D., A to Z Guide To Supplements The meat connection to excess dietary phosphorus is also well explained in The Doctors Complete Guide to Vitamins and Minerals: Excess dietary phosphorus, found in meat, soft drinks, grains, and potatoes, may promote bone loss by interfering with calcium balance. In theory, the higher your phosphorus intake, the greater your tendency to leech calcium out of bones, which could weaken the bony foundation beneath your gums. Recommendation: ...try not to drink carbonated soft drinks, diet or otherwise.
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As you can see, high-protein diets and soft drink consumption multiply each others mineral imbalances. While avoiding rened carbohydrates is a very healthy way to lose weight, if people dont pay attention to their calcium / phosphorus ratios, some of their weight loss may actually be due to their loss of bone mass!
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This study showed that calcium supplementation helped prevent bone fractures. It only makes sense: if you get more calcium, you will help balance out the ratios. But as the earlier quotes mentioned, the absorption of that calcium may be seriously impaired by the excessive phosphorus. This is why the best strategy is to reduce phosphorus intake in order to balance the calcium / phosphorus ratio in your body. And the easiest way to do that is to simply avoid soft drinks for life.
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Soft drinks make you ugly by altering your facial bone structure
Consuming soft drinks can even alter your physical appearance by slowly destroying the bone structure of your face and jaw. Much of the calcium loss that impacts bones affects the dominant jawbone, which makes a persons face look old, weak and sunken: The differences between people who had eaten their ancestral diet from birth and people who had feasted on sugar, white our products, and soft drinks are astonishing. The traditional wholesome diet produced wide faces with jaws wide enough to accommodate all thirty-two teeth with proper spacing, high cheekbones, few to no cavitations, and wide foreheads to house their brains. The facial structures of the people who enjoyed a more civilized diet are not so beautiful. Their jaws are narrow with so little room that the teeth crowd together in two crooked rows. Cavities are common, and in cultures where dental care is inadequate, the pain and suffering are intolerable. Their foreheads are also narrow, or misshapen, with scarcely enough room for a growing brain. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers The solution to everything presented here is deceptively simple: drink water, not soft drinks. Its the only liquid I consume: no soft drinks, no juices, no milk. And yet so many people simply refuse to drink water: Americans dont drink very much water. We drink coffee, a beverage that pulls even more minerals out of the tissues and excretes them in the urine. Americans drink soft drinks that are often loaded with more sodium and which further unbalance the mineral stores. We drink V8, loaded with sodium. We drink everything but water, which would pull the excess sodium out of the blood and out of the brain. We defeat the bodys own mechanism of balancing the critical sodium-to-potassium ratios by overindulging in these entrees and beverages that contain so much sodium, and then by not drinking water to ush it out of the system. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers So just how serious is this problem of calcium depletion and bone mass loss in the rst place? Its a hidden, destructive health consequence that comes from drinking any kind of soft drinks, and very few people are aware of this. Heres an extended collection of additional quotes from doctors and authors on this subject: Diets high in sugar alter calcium uptake; coffee, alcoholic beverages, and phosphorousrich soft drinks also promote increased calcium excretion. - Disease Prevention and Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation
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Many general dietary factors have been suggested as a cause of osteoporosis, including: low calcium-high phosphorus intake, high-protein diet, high-acid-ash diet, high salt intake, and trace mineral deciencies. It appears that increased soft-drink consumption is a major factor that contributes to osteoporosis. - Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine Avoid soft drinks. One study of 460 young, very active girls found that those who drank colas were ve times more likely to suffer fractures than girls of equal activity who avoided soft drinks. It is suspected that because phosphorus draws calcium from bone, it is the culprit in such cases. Cows milk is also high in phosphorus, as well as protein. Avoid all soft drinks, especially those sweetened with aspartame. Carbonated soft drinks deplete the bodys magnesium. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life Phase out soft drinks. Canned soda contains excess phosphorus, a mineral that could lead to the leaching of calcium from your bones, a potential cause of osteoporosis. Some researchers believe that calcium is rst robbed not from your hips or spine but from your jaw, leading to tooth loss, says Ken Wical, D.D.S., professor of restorative dentistry at Loma Linda University in California. - Healing With Vitamins by Prevention Magazine
Action Item:
Avoid soft drinks for life. Drink water or tea, but no acidic drinks like fruit juices or nutritionally imbalanced drinks like cows milk.
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When it comes to caffeine, soft drinks arent the only concern, either. Most people are getting an overdose of caffeine from other sources regardless of whether they consume soft drinks: Caffeine is clearly the most prevalently used stimulant in the world. Coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, many soft drinks, diet pills, aspirin, various analgesics used for migraine headache and vascular pain, and even some herbal preparations contain either caffeine or very closely related substances. Examples of such caffeine-like substances are theobromine in chocolate and cocoa and theophylline in tea. When caffeine and similar compounds are taken in excess, any of several symptoms usually result: anxiety and nervousness, insomnia or light sleep patterns, various types of heart disease, stomach and intestinal maladies, and moodiness. When consumed regularly, as little as two cups of coffee can initiate these symptoms. Children who exhibit hyper activity are often victims of diets rich in chocolates and cola drinks. - Paul Pitchford, Healing With Whole Foods Elson Haas, M.D., describes caffeine as a lifetime drug for many, and puts it in the category of the most frequently abused drug in our modern society: Caffeine can be a lifetime drug for many. We begin with hot chocolate or chocolate bars, which contain some caffeine, move into colas or other soft drinks with caffeine, and then add coffee and tea. Many adults use caffeine daily, but this is slowly changing with education and experience revealing the long-range problems resulting from caffeine abuse. Physiologically, caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant. The amount needed to produce the wake-up and stimulation effect increases with regular use, as is typical of addictive drugs. Larger and more frequent doses are needed for the same effect, and symptoms can develop if we do not get our x. Eventually, we need the drug to function; without it, fatigue and drowsiness occur. So caffeine is a natural stimulant with both physical and psychological addiction potential and withdrawal symptoms similar to the symptoms of its abuse. - Elson Haas M.D., Staying Healthy With Nutrition
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In summary, caffeine is not only the most frequently-abused psychoactive drug in America, it carries signicant a signicant negative health risk as well. Dr. Elson Haas jokes about honest labeling requirements for products containing caffeine: All products containing caffeine should carry a warning saying something like, Caffeine can be hazardous to your health. Regular use may be addicting and injurious. The problem here is less with the drug itself and more with the amounts consumed and the constant stimulation on which people depend many times daily. The caffeine creates an addiction to the drink. - Elson Haas M.D., Staying Healthy With Nutrition What hasnt been mentioned in any of this literature is caffeines ability to also deplete the adrenal glands. This causes long-term exhaustion, a condition that most caffeine drinkers solve by, of course, drinking more caffeine!
Aluminum cans may present yet another health danger for soft drinks
The news on soft drinks keeps getting worse, it seems, and another toxin present in soft drinks isnt something added by manufacturers: its something leaching out of the containers in which soft drinks are stored and shipped: aluminum cans. No educated person in their right mind would eat or drink aluminum, and yet nearly everyone will gladly drink highly acidic substances that have been rubbing molecules with aluminum for any number of days, weeks or months. No metal is 100 percent solid, as any physicist knows. Some of the aluminum inevitably leeches into the soft drink itself. Although aluminum is not a heavy metal, environmental exposure is frequent, leading to concerns about accumulative effects and a possible connection with Alzheimers disease. In the home, we are in constant contact with aluminum in foods and in water; from cookware and soft drink cans; from consuming items with high levels of aluminum (e.g., antacids, buffered aspirin, or treated drinking water; or even by using nasal sprays, toothpaste, and antiperspirants). - Disease Prevention and Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation
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The ability of aluminum to contaminate beverages stored in aluminum cans is well explained by Elson Haas: One of the most common sources of aluminum uoride complexes is in liquids packaged in aluminum cans, a combination that is especially hazardous with acidic fruit juices and diet drinks. Acidic juices leach aluminum from the wall of the can and disperse it throughout the juice. Soft drinks also present special hazards. While all soft drinks containing uoride will leach aluminum from the can, diet sodas may be worse than regular sodas because the uoride content, at least in one study, was higher in the diet drinks. Although most aluminum cans now have inner linings, the coating may be defective and can also be fractured during shipping. Furthermore, the longer a canned drink sits, especially at higher temperatures, the more aluminouoride compound will be created in the drink. This would be a major consideration, for example, in the millions of diet soft drinks donated to soldiers in the Persian Gulf. These drinks sat in the blazing heat, over 105 F, for weeks. In addition, the drinks contained the toxic sweetener, aspartame, which in the heat breaks down very quickly into the carcinogenic compound, diketopiperizine, as well as formaldehyde and formic acid. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life Soft drink manufacturers, of course, claim that their aluminum cans are perfectly safe. But they also claim that their high-sugar products dont cause obesity, either, and they staunchly defend the safety of aspartame. So its difcult to lend credibility to anything stated by soft drink manufacturers. Clearly, they are primarily interested in selling products, not in protecting the health of their customers. After all, sick customers dont demand reimbursements from soft drinks companies for their medical bills. Making people sick and promoting diseases like osteoporosis has absolutely nancial consequences to soft drink companies themselves. The medical costs of dealing with these diseases are fully shouldered by the customer.
Soft drink companies spin the science to claim their products are harmless
Theres a tremendous amount of spin coming out of the public relations departments of soft drink companies. Not surprisingly, the soft drink spin machine has infected all sorts of scientic-sounding groups and organizations whose employees unabashedly defend the soft drink manufacturers: Corporations also fund nonprot research institutes which provide third party experts to advocate on their behalf. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), for example, is a commonly-used industry front group that produces PR ammunition for the food processing and chemical industries. Headed by Elizabeth Whelan, ACSH routinely presents itself as an independent, objective science institute. This claim was dissected by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post in the March 1990 Columbia Journalism Review, which studied the special interests that fund ACSH. Kurtz reported that Whelan praises the nutritional virtues of fast food and receives money from Burger King. She downplays the link between a high fat diet and heart disease, while receiving funding from Oscar Mayer, Frito Lay and Land OLakes. She defends saccharin and receives money from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, NutraSweet and the National Soft Drink Association. - John Stauber, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
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Despite all the spin efforts, it is generally recognized that soft drinks are unhealthy and certainly not wholesome beverages as claimed by soft drink makers. Yet, every time a lawmaker attempts to ban soft drinks in schools, for example, or pass new junk food taxes that would help dissuade consumers from buying so many soft drinks, they are steamrolled by a seemingly unstoppable political inuence machine. The combined industries of food producers, media owners, and pharmaceutical companies, when taken as a whole, simply arent interested in making people healthy since that would destroy their prots. This phenomenon is described by Marion Nestle in Food Politics: Ethical or not, a message to eat less meat, dairy, and processed foods is not going to be popular among the producers of such foods. The message will not be popular with cattle ranchers, meat packers, dairy producers, or milk bottlers; oil seed growers, processors, or transporters; grain producers (most grain is used to feed cattle); makers of soft drinks, candy bars, and snack foods; owners of fast-food outlets and franchise restaurants; media corporations and advertising agencies; manufacturers and marketers of television sets and computers (where advertising takes place); and, eventually, drug and health care industries likely to lose business if people stay healthier longer. The range of economic sectors that would be affected if people changed their diets, avoided obesity, and prevented chronic diseases surely rivals the range of industries that would be affected if people stopped smoking cigarettes. Perhaps for this reason, USDA ofcials believe that really encouraging people to follow dietary guidelines would be so expensive and disruptive to the agricultural economy as to create impossible political barriers. Rather than accepting the challenge and organizing a concerted national campaign to encourage more healthful eating patterns, they propose a more politically expedient solution: the industry should work to improve the food supply through nutrient fortication and the development of functional foods with added nutritional value. [Emphasis added.] - Marion Nestle, Food Politics To get an idea of the power of this political / economic machine, take a look at the inuence of just one player: big sugar companies. In 1991, 1,700 farms raised sugarcane and 13,700 raised sugar beets in the United States, but 42 percent of the sugar subsidies went to just 1 percent of these growers. The owners of these few farms give generously to both political parties. The Fanjul family, for example, controls about one-third of Floridas sugarcane production and collects at least $60 million annually in subsidies. The Fanjuls contributed more than $350,000 to the two political parties -- more to Democrats than to Republicans -- through their Flo-Sun companies in 1997-1998. Alfonso Fanjul hosted a dinner attended by President Bill Clinton that raised more than a million dollars for the Florida Democratic party. - Marion Nestle, Food Politics
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2.
3.
4.
If youre interested in chlorella, my recommended source is Jenny Lee Naturals (http://www. jennyleenaturals.com), which also sells spirulina and various superfood nutritional supplement products. Learn more about soft drinks at: http://www.newstarget.com/soft_drinks.html
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Various defenders of the meat industry, of course, strongly resist any efforts to identify or regulate the various chemicals contaminating their products: The pesticide, plastics, pulp and paper, household products, oil, and cosmetics industries have all mobilized to defend chlorine chemistry against its environmentalist critics. The food industry has also weighed in, mindful that dioxin accumulates in fatty tissue and is therefore omnipresent in meat and dairy products. Coordinated by the National Cattlemens Beef Association, the food industrys Dioxin Working Group includes the National Milk Producers Federation, American Society of Animal Science, National Broiler Council, National Turkey Federation, International Dairy Foods Association, American Sheep Industry Association, National Pork Producers Council, American Meat Institute, National Renderers Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, and the National Food Processors Association. In his report to the Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC), Jack Mongoven noted that these groups have a history of strong relations with the Agriculture Department, and its certain they will use these solid ties to put pressure on EPA through Agriculture. - Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us Were Experts
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And yet the meat packing industry refuses to remove this substance from our nations food supply: Meat packing, like the packing of other products, plays an important role in the livestock industry. Nitrites are another pillar of this industry. They not only preserve meat longer, but give it a cosmetic appeal by intensifying the red color. I already mentioned that when heated, nitrites become carcinogenic. These nitrites are widely used in lunch meats, hot dogs and bacon. It was recently published that children who eat 12 or more hot dogs a month are 7.5 times more prone to get leukemia. When mothers consume hot dogs during pregnancy, the incidence of brain cancer in their offspring is greatly increased. - Francisco Contreras, M.D., Health in the 21st Century
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You would think that the food processing companies would have read these studies by now. But they seem to act as if they had no clue (or dont really care), because its use by food processing companies continues to be widespread: Nitrates are the next-most dangerous, because they can cause cancer. Nitrite is added to 60 to 65 percent of all pork produced in the United States, as well as some other meats, poultry, sh, and cheese. It is especially prevalent in processed meats, such as bacon, sausage, luncheon meats, and hot dogs, to preserve the pink color and inhibit the growth of the bacteria that cause botulism food poisoning. - Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home If you eat bacon, check the package of bacon in your refrigerator right now. Do you nd sodium nitrite listed on the label? Of all the processed meats you can buy, bacon has by far the highest levels of sodium nitrite: Levels of nitrosamines tend to be particularly high in bacon, and they are present in lower quantities in sandwich meats, salami and bologna, hot dogs, and smoked meats and sh. All of these should be avoided, especially bacon. While this may sound like drastic advice, it is well founded. - Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., The Politics of Cancer
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In other words, even if you have 100 percent organic, ethically-raised bacon on your plate, the very process of frying it up in a pan results in the creation of other cancer-causing chemicals. Foods cooked at very high temperatures, like bacon, are simply not healthy: Fried foods are subjected to high temperatures, and they contain considerably more compounds that are damaging to DNA than non-fried foods. Studies have shown that people who consume too many fried foods such as bacon show pulverized products of their DNA in their urine. - J. Robert Hatherill, Ph.D., Eat To Beat Cancer
How to protect yourself from the sodium nitrite found in bacon and other processed meats
The good news to all of this, by the way, is that you can protect yourself from many of the chemicals either found present in the bacon you purchase or created by high-temperature cooking processes. There are essentially three ways to do this: 1. Take green tea tincture or capsules when you eat bacon. Green tea has been shown to inhibit the formation of nitrosamines: Green tea consumption with meals may inhibit the formation of nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are formed when nitrites, such as those used in the curing of bacon and ham, bind to amino acids. Numerous studies show that green tea (including green tea polyphenols and extracts) exert signicant inhibitory effects on the formation of nitrosamines in various animal and human models. For example, when human volunteers ingested green tea along with 300 milligrams sodium nitrate and 300 milligrams proline, nitrosoproline formation was strongly inhibited. The popular custom of drinking green tea with meals in Japan may be a major reason for the low cancer rates there. With the cancer rate in the United States rising, more Americans might want to start drinking green tea with their meals. - Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements Personally, I recommend green tea tincture, since it offers the most quickly available form of green tea compounds and is likely to start protecting you sooner than green tea capsules. As with many of the supplements mentioned here, you can nd a high-quality tincture at http://www. JennyLeeNaturals.com. Green tea is also available at health food stores and vitamin suppliers. 2. Get plenty of antioxidants with your meals if you eat bacon or other processed meats. Studies show that the isolated vitamins C and E both protect against nitrosamine formation, but as you know, I always recommend superfood supplements over isolated vitamins. Just make sure you get plenty of vitamins C and E from some natural source.
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3. Remove the sodium nitrite from the bacon before cooking it, then add your own healthy sea salt. This is an excellent solution described by Blaylock in Health and Nutrition Secrets: If you feel you cannot live without bacon, do this rst. Fill a bowl with distilled water, place the strips of bacon loosely in the water and cook in a microwave for forty-ve seconds, or on the stove for two minutes. Stir the water and let it sit for about two more minutes. Then pour off the water and repeat the process. Youll notice the bacon has become very bland after all this cooking. This is because sodium nitrite has a salty taste and is water-soluble. All you have to do is add a little sea salt (dont use commercial salt, as it may contain aluminum) to bring back the taste. I also advise cooking bacon in extra virgin olive oil. Just pour a thin layer over the bottom of the pan and sprinkle with turmeric, which will dissolve in the oil and give your bacon a nice bright yellow color. Better still, the avonoid, curcumin, in the turmeric is a powerful cancer-inhibiting substance, and will protect the meat from forming dangerous heterocyclic amines (cancer-causing chemicals formed when meat is seared) in your body. In addition, curcumin is an antibacterial substance and a powerful antioxidant.
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Oprah was acquitted, but not without having to spend nearly $1 million on legal fees to defend her comments. To get a real look at what goes on in the beef industry, you have to examine the illegal use of growth-promoting hormones, antibiotics and other substances used in cattle in the U.S., as well as the international communitys response to that abuse.
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The meat industry then promptly switched to other carcinogenic additives, particularly natural sex hormones, which are implanted in the ears of commercially raised feedlot cattle. Since 1983, the FDA has allowed virtually unregulated use of these natural additives right up to the time of slaughter. More than a decade ago, Roy Hertz, then director of endocrinology of the National Cancer Institute and a world authority on hormonal cancer, warned of the carcinogenic risks of estrogenic feed additives, particularly for hormonally sensitive tissues such as breast tissue, because they could increase normal body hormonal levels and disturb delicately poised hormonal balances. Hertz pointed to evidence from innumerable animal tests and human clinical experience that such imbalance can be carcinogenic. Hertz also warned of the essentially uncontrolled and unregulated use of these extremely potent biological agents, no dietary levels of which can be regarded as safe. Even a dime-sized piece of meat contains billions or trillions of molecules of these carcinogens. Virtually the entire U.S. population consumes, without any warning, labeling, or information, unknown and unpredictable amounts of hormonal residues in meat products over a lifetime. In 1986, as many as half of all cattle sampled in feedlots as large as 600 animals were found to have hormones illegally implanted in muscle rather than the ear skin, to induce further increased growth. This practice results in very high residues in meat, which even the FDA has admitted could produce adverse effects. Hormonal feed contamination in the United States is only part of a much larger problem caused by the use of thousands of feed additives. These include antibiotics, tranquilizers, pesticides, animal drugs, articial avors, and industrial wastes, many of which are carcinogenic in addition to their other harmful effects. The runaway technologies of the meat-product and pharmaceutical industries are supported by an eager cadre of academic consultants, contractees and apologists, tremendous lobbying pressures, and a revolving door between senior personnel in industry and regulatory agencies. As clearly evidenced in a series of General Accounting Ofce investigations and Congressional hearings, USDA inspection and FDA registration and residue-tolerance programs are in near total disarray, aggravated by brazen denials and cover-ups by these agencies. A January 1986 report, Human Food Safety and the Regulation of Animal Drugs, unanimously approved by the House Committee on Government Operations, concluded that the FDA has consistently disregarded its responsibility -- has repeatedly put what it perceives are interests of veterinarians and the livestock industry ahead of its legal obligation to protect consumers -- jeopardizing the health and safety of consumers of meat, milk, and poultry. The great majority of feed additives are used in the absence of evidence of efcacy, practical and sensitive monitoring methods, and minimal if any safety test data, apart from the widespread use of illegal and unapproved drugs.
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Krull says the issue of testing for mad cow disease is highly political. The more cattle tested, the more likely it is that some will be found with the disease. They dont want to nd it, says Krull. The USDA really should be funding this like crazy, but its not. The practice of providing ruminant feed to farm animals has been acknowledged to be extremely dangerous, says Krull. The high concentration of nerve and brain tissue in ruminant feed is thought to greatly increase the risk of transmission of mad cow disease. In the 1990s, the U.S., along with most other beef-producing nations, introduced a ban on ruminant feed, but Krull points out the problem of regulation remains. Currently, there is no way to prevent small farmers from making and using ruminant feed said Krull. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/01/040115074059.htm
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advised that, at a bare minimum, the feeding of ruminants to ruminants had to be outlawed in order to prevent an outbreak of BSE. On August 4, 1997, almost a year and a half after the FDA promised a speedy response to the threat of mad cow, new animal feed restrictions took effect. The United States has no BSE, the agency declared, and the nal rule provides the necessary feed controls . . . should BSE occur here. The FDA described its new ban as mammalian-to-ruminant, with exceptions. Dead sheep, goats, cattle, deer, mink, elk, dogs, and cats could no longer be fed to cattle. Rendering plants and feed mills would have to prevent these banned ingredients from mingling with feedstuffs that cattle were still allowed to eat: dead horses, pigs, and poultry; cattle blood, gelatin, and tallow; and plate waste collected from restaurants, regardless of what kind of meat those leftovers contained. There were no new restrictions, however, on what could be fed to poultry, hogs, zoo animals, or pets. Indeed, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the National Food Processors Association, and the Pet Food Institute successfully lobbied against any new labeling requirement for pet foods. These industry groups rightly worried that the FDAs proposed warning label -Do not feed to ruminants -- might alarm consumers about what their pets were actually being fed. Think about that section, too, next time youre purchasing bagged food for Fido. Chances are, Fido is chewing on ruminant cow parts.
Action Item:
If you choose to eat animal products, buy exclusively from organic farms and ranches.
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A critical look at cows milk reveals the undeniable fact that cows milk is baby food. And it isnt even meant for baby human beings, either: its baby food for calves. Ive been dairy-free for many years, and when I see friends drinking milk, I jokingly tell them, Grow up! Thats baby food! Science is now validating what mothers have known since the beginning of time: Human breast milk was designed for human babies, and cows milk was designed for calves. The balance of nutrients in bovine milk is designed to grow a hundred-pound newborn calf to several hundred pounds within twenty-four months. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers And yet the vast majority of human adults, spurred on by advertising from the dairy industry, continue to pump their bodies full of this nutritionally-imbalanced substance (imbalanced for humans, of course, but not for cows). I nd it truly bizarre that so many people think that a grown, healthy, 180-pound adult man should be sucking baby food from the teat of a bovine animal. Seems truly strange, doesnt it? As this quote from Herbal Defense says, humans are the only animals that engage in cross-species consumption of mothers milk: Indeed, there is not a lot that milk has to recommend it for human consumption. Cows milk is baby food for calves. No species on earth besides us drinks the milk of another species. Furthermore, no other species drinks milk after infancy. Milk appears to be baby food, created specically for the needs of babies, and it has been noted that humans are the only species that is never really weaned. Thus it makes sense that, after weaning, a large majority of people simply dont have the enzyme that breaks down lactose (milk sugar). Lactose intolerance is treated as if something is wrong with the person who suffers from it. But most of the population cant digest milk properly, and its likely thats because were not supposed to be digesting it. If the majority of the population reacts negatively to a food, perhaps theres not something wrong with the population; perhaps theres something wrong with the food. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense But even beyond the fundamental concept that cows milk is baby food, there are a great many additional hazards present when it comes to drinking bovine extract. These will be discussed in some detail in the sections that follow. If we were pouring large glasses of ice-cold raw, organic milk into our childrens glasses, we might not see as many problems. Pasteurized, homogenized, bovine-growth hormone, and antibiotic-laced milk is not the equivalent. The advertisements, especially the ones with our favorite TV and movie stars sporting the familiar white mustache, say, Yes, milk does a body good. My response is, If you are a calf, yes. If youre a person, no. Especially if the milk is pasteurized and homogenized. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
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Homogenized milk fats, then, are the result of product marketing efforts to help sell milk! The fats that you might normally nd in unprocessed cows milk would oat to the top. But by breaking these fats into microscopic fat particles (homogenizing the fats), milk producers are able to keep the milk fats in suspension so that they dont rise to the top. The unfortunate consequence of all this is that the human body was not designed to handle these microscopic milk fats. Because the fat molecules are now small enough to allow dangerous substances to enter the bloodstream, it directly accelerates arterial scarring and therefore promotes cardiovascular disease. Theres no lack of scientic evidence backing this position, theres only a lack of public knowledge. Milk is sacred, it seems, and the dairy industry has effectively inuenced most people into believing that milk is good for you.
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Human breast milk also contains an ample supply of all-important cholesterol, which is, despite what you may have heard, essential for human health and especially for growing brain mass: Human milk is high in cholesterol, with about four mg per uid ounce. The cholesterol in breast milk is used to provide structural strength to the neurons so that they do not collapse in upon themselves from the pressure of the surrounding cells and uid. Cholesterol is particularly important in the myelin sheath, which surrounds the axon of the neuron. Although several types of fatty acids comprise the insulating myelin sheath, it contains more than twice as much cholesterol as any other fat. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
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Babies fed infant formulas based on cows milk or unhealthy vegetable oils may have their brain growth seriously impaired by these nutritional deciencies: Cows milk-based formulas do not contain cholesterol, a fatty acid that is used to myelinate the nerve cell sheath and provide a solid structure to the cell membrane. The structurally and functionally important Omega-3 fatty acids, used to enhance the conductivity of the nerve signal, are also essentially absent. ...The fats provided in articial formulas, usually from a vegetable source like coconut, corn, safower, or soybean oil, differ substantially from the oils found in human milk in that they provide only minuscule amounts of the Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers Overall, then, the nutritional differences between cows milk and human breast milk clearly make cows milk a poor choice for growing babies, not to mention fully-grown adults. And for adults, they should have been weaned off this baby food years ago, for cows milk is truly baby food provided by nature for a specic purpose: to grow baby calves into quarter-ton cows. That human beings continue to consume such vast quantities of milk is truly a freak of nature. And the health consequences of that consumption will become apparent in the sections that follow. There are a great many negative health consequences resulting from the regular consumption of cows milk.
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For those who have a lot of mucus in general, are overweight, have dampness, are prone to cysts, have chronic coughs or runny noses or experience such obvious problems as asthma or allergies, dairy will only aggravate these conditions. Often childrens asthma, coughs, runny noses, diarrhea or constipation will disappear by simply eliminating dairy and juices from the diet. - Lesley Tierra, The Herbs of Life Milk is best avoided by those with sinus problems. It suppresses the helpful thinning of mucosal secretions, and causes or aggravates symptoms in many allergic people. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense
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My take on all this, then, is not to try to force anybody to give up cows milk or to judge anybody for continuing to drink it. My aim is to simply help you become aware of what its doing to you, and to help you conduct a 30-day no dairy test to see how much better you may feel. Once you become aware of the dietary inuences of cows milk, then at least you can make a well informed decision about whether those effects are worth it. But what I truly detest is people who trudge along through life with all sorts of dairy-related disorders like asthma, constipation and sinus problems, and who wont even try a 30-day dairy free diet to see if it might help. Its as if they dont even want to get better. Somehow, they actually enjoy the asthma, the difculty breathing, the sinus headaches and everything else that goes with it. They dont want to change, and they dont want to know anything more about cows milk because, dang it, they want that glass of milk each morning. It is these people who are truly doomed to a life of suffering. But I know youre different, because anybody who would have ordered this material is clearly interested in being healthier and in learning more about the links between diet and health. Thats the kind of attitude I truly admire, and whether or not you nd dairy to be something you want to take out of your own diet is entirely up to you. What I respect is your willingness to inform yourself, regardless of what you decide to do with that information. With that said, lets get moving with constipation (pun intended).
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It is for these three reasons that hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer so much constipation. And yet the vast majority of those constipation sufferers can experience perfectly normal bowel function if they would simply remove cows milk from their diets: An Italian study showed that 21 out of 27 children under the age of three had a signicant increase in bowel function (number of stools, softening, and lack of discomfort and anal ssures, among other factors) within three days of having cows milk removed from the diet. A cows milk challenge caused rapid return of symptoms. If your child is constipated, eliminate cows milk in the diet as the rst step. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense
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It is a sad, but true, commentary on conventional medicine to realize that the vast majority of socalled diseases are truly nothing more than the natural results of lifestyle choices. Diet is the #1 cause of all modern disease, and a person can radically alter their health outcome, including reversing serious disease, by making radical alterations to their diet. One such alteration is, of course, the removal of cows milk from the diet. Beyond constipation, by the way, there are yet other reasons to avoid cows milk. The next well explore is the link between cows milk consumption and diabetes.
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Several studies have demonstrated that a protein in cows milk closely resembles the molecular structure of the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, called islet cells. Because the immune system confuses the two, it begins to attack the islet cells by mistake, leading to their destruction. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life A critical review and analysis of all relevant citations in the medical literature indicated that early cows milk exposure may, in fact, be an important determinant of subsequent type 1 diabetes and may increase the risk about 1.5 times. In case-controlled studies, patients with type1 diabetes were more likely to have been breast-fed for less than three months and to have been exposed to cows milk or solid foods before four months. - Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Textbook of Natural Medicine ...There is clear evidence that feeding cows milk to an infant sets him up for a greater risk of developing juvenile-onset diabetes, either due to a type of protein called bovine serum albumin (BSA) that can be found in cows milk -- based infant formulas or other milk products, or because cows milk often stimulates the production of other antibodies that may destroy portions of the pancreas. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers
The media avoid talking about cows milk and diabetes to protect advertising revenues
And yet, despite all of the evidence showing that cows milk results in a greatly heightened risk of juvenile diabetes, most people have never heard of this link. Why is that? The answer, of course, is food politics: Although proof of this connection appeared in one of the most prestigious diabetes journals, the general public is still not aware of the risk. Why? Because of the power of the milk producers. It seems the media would rather have tens of thousands of children suffer a life of diabetes than anger one of their biggest nancial contributors. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life When it comes to cows milk and diabetes, the bottom line is that the scientic evidence clearly shows a causal relationship between the two. It offers yet another reason why consumers should consider avoiding cows milk entirely. But there are still other reasons discussed below. Before we get to the hormones and chemicals used in the production of cows milk, it is useful to examine the heavy use of cows milk in human babies. Although this may not directly apply to you as an adult, it is a worthwhile discussion for two reasons: 1) Many readers have babies, and 2) The health problems experienced by babies on cows milk are a strong indicator of the unhealthful nature of the substance on human adults.
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In children, some doctors even believe that the consumption of cows milk causes behavioral disorders (ADD) and learning disabilities: Dr. Lendon Smith, M.D., pediatrician and author of Hyper Kids, Feed Your Kids Right, and other books, is a leading spokesperson for natural healing for kids. He believes that 90 percent of all generally sickly children will show improvement in all areas when you just take away cows milk. He told Karta Purkh that in his clinical experience a similar percentage of ADD and learning-disability cases improve with removal of milk products. Milk is especially implicated in that commonest of childhood ailments, the middle ear infection - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense But perhaps the worst health impact comes from the iron deciencies caused in infants by the consumption of cows milk. This deciency is so pronounced that in 1992, the American Academy of Pediatric actually announced that parents shouldnt feed cows milk to infants less than one year old! There are other negative health effects from feeding cows milk to babies that go beyond iron deciency, autoimmune disorders, and the nutritional deciencies of cows milk, however. There is also colic and dehydration, as explained in the following two passages: Colic is a buildup of trapped gas in the babys colon. It is extremely treatable. It is also believed to be -- once again -- the result of milk allergy in a large percentage of babies. Milk is the most common culprit in colic by a wide margin. In studies all over the world, removing cows milk consistently cures colic in approximately 70 percent of the test samples, returning in every single subject when the milk is returned to their diets. (Note: Removing cows milk means not drinking any if youre nursing.) - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense The normal practice is that the infant is given concentrated milk and bundled to sleep. While asleep, much water, in comparison to the weight of the infant, is lost from the lungs during the exhalation phase of the breathing process. This water loss from the lungs, on top of the fact that the milk contained possibly only just enough water for the digestion of the milk itself, leaves the infants body short of water and forces it into physiological events for drought management. - Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D., Water for Health, for Healing, for Life Although the information in this section just scratched the surface, it should be rather obvious to any critical thinker familiar with the science and research on this topic that cows milk is an extremely poor dietary choice for human babies. It is nutritionally imbalanced, increases rates of fatality, causes iron deciencies, lacks the all-important healthy oils needed for building brain mass, causes colic, and contributes to an increased risk of diabetes. Is this really the kind of food you want to be feeding to your children?
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Yet theres more! Everything weve discussed so far hasnt even mentioned the contamination and exploitation of dairy cows using dangerous growth hormones, and thats the topic of the next section:
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which would grow slowly and manifest as clinical cancer in old age. He also feels that such hormones could stimulate the progression of childhood leukemias. Tritsch concludes that the widespread consumption of BGH-supplemented milk is, therefore, an experiment on an unsuspecting population that could have horrendous consequences, adding that it would be difcult to dismantle a well-entrenched BGH industry. Use of rBGH is also known to increase the amount of pus, bacteria, and antibiotic contamination in milk, since cows given rBGH are more susceptible to disease. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense
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$2 million bribe for approving the drug without further testing. Fox Television news killed the story after the station received aggressive threat letters from Monsanto attorneys. When the reporters were then red, they pointed out that Monsanto was a client of a major advertising company owned by Fox chief Rupert Murdoch, whose stations advertise Monsanto products nationally - Kenny Ausubel, When Healing Becomes A Crime
Monsanto harasses organic milk producers who state their milk is made without hormones
Monsanto has gone out of its way to legally harass small dairy producers who produce hormonefree milk, by the way. Monsanto has actually sued them for claiming that their milk contains no hormones right on the front label of their milk products. If the milk contains no hormones, then they should be able to say it contains no hormones, right? Not according to Monsanto and the FDA. Monsanto claims that the statement somehow implies that hormone-free milk is better than milk made with injected hormones. And since the FDA claims all milk is equal, whether treated with hormones or not, they say the package claim is misleading. Hence the politically-motivated lawsuit from Monsanto. You see, not only does Monsanto want everybody to buy their bovine growth hormones, they also want to legally harass milk producers who avoid the use of hormones. Thats called protecting the racket. Author Peter Hardin of The Milkweed (http://www.themilkweed.com) which provides insider information to dairy farmers, has nothing but criticism for Monsanto and the FDA when it comes to BGH. The following is excerpted from an editorial published at The Capital Times: This biotech cow hormone has rocked the dairy industry and consumers since the mid1980s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits the hormone has been its biggestever consumer food safety controversy. Monsantos rbGH was the rst major biotech food production tool approved by the FDA. Three potential problem areas come to mind: human safety, animal safety and quality control. In my opinion, the FDAs human safety oversight of rbGH has been awed from the beginning. In the mid-1980s, the FDA failed to require a mandatory residue test for rbGH. Yet Monsanto and government ofcials claim there is no difference in the milk from untreated and rbGH-injected cows. To counter intense public skepticism about rbGH, the FDA published a 10-page summary of its human safety determinations in the journal Science in August 1990. Among the ndings, the agency said that the rbGH in the milk of injected cows was degraded by commercial pasteurization. The sole research cited for this claim was that of a Canadian graduate student, whose masters thesis studied the feeding of rbGH-derived milk to calves (not humans). This study erroneously heated milk for 30 minutes at the 15-second pasteurization temperature.
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Data suggest higher IGF-1 levels are found in rbGH-injected cows milk, compared to normal milk. Thousands of research studies probing potential links between IGF-1 and cancer development have been published in scientic and medical journals. With regard to animal safety, injections of rbGH spur dairy cow metabolism. One-third more blood is pumped through injected cows hearts. This synthetic hormone is so powerful it kills muscle tissue at injection sites. In early 1990, my newspaper, The Milkweed, published stolen Monsanto animal health research les. Those les showed dramatic increases in weights of many key organs and glands of treated cows, compared to control groups. Whats gone wrong with Monsantos rbGH? Synthetic hormones used in our food-producing livestock pose risks too serious to cover up. If a serious problem exists, why has only 50 percent of rbGH sales been curtailed, instead of 100 percent? Consumers and dairy farmers deserve a complete and honest explanation of why the FDA has restricted this drug. Of course, when theres money to be made, youre unlikely to hear the truth from anyone standing in line to receive some of that money -- and that certainly includes the majority of magazine publishers, newspaper publishers, cable companies and media outlets. They all benet from milk advertising (milk money). Hence, they are unlikely to make public information that would earn the wrath of the dairy industry.\ When it comes to hormones, however, there is one thing you can do to protect yourself: buy organic milk made without the use of hormones. Even though youll still be subject to the other negative health effects of drinking cows milk, you will at least avoid the synthetic hormones.
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The full report on pus, found at http://www.notmilk.com/lawbreakers.html shows how federal standards allow 200,000 pus cells per milliliter of milk (about the size of a thimbleful). Any amount of pus over 200,000 cells per milliliter is a violation of federal milk safety laws. And yet the number of pus cells in milk has been found to consistently violate these safety limits. A 2001 analysis shows the following pus counts in milk sold in the United States, broken down by state:
AL AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA ID IL IN IA KS KY LA
444,000 360,000 486,000 298,000 312,000 310,000 386,000 548,000 407,000 320,000 322,000 343,000 333,000 476,000 413,000 479,000
ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND
290,000 351,000 308,000 287,000 420,000 442,000 437,000 248,000 443,000 330,000 299,000 339,000 311,000 280,000 364,000 344,000
OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
327,000 483,000 286,000 317,000 206,000 404,000 459,000 413,000 342,000 284,000 302,000 333,000 275,000 422,000 297,000 341,000
All you people in Florida really have it great! Youre getting almost triple the pus factor in dairy milk that is allowed by law. If you think about it, pus is very easy to hide in milk since pus, by itself, appears sort of milky white. So how would you know if pus was in your milk in the rst place? You wouldnt. And you probably didnt. But its there, and its present in quantities that would downright shock most milk drinkers. Is pus the perfect food? Probably not. The information youve read here is just a taste of the ugly truth behind the dairy industry. Keep in mind that it may take you some time to clean up your system after ditching milk, too: According to our observations, dairy products prevent the cleansing of residues of meat consumption from earlier in ones life. In order to discharge these residues, one must stay completely free of dairy for a minimum of six months -- some health practitioners estimate several times this long. - Paul Pitchford, Healing With Whole Foods
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Action Item:
Take the 30-day no-dairy diet test by removing all dairy products from your diet for 30 days to see how you feel.
Read more about milk and dairy products at: http://www.newstarget.com/dairy_products.html
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Monosodium Glutamate
I have spoken with far too many people who have been emotionally shattered, nancially devastated, and had their life paths altered by adverse reactions to monosodium glutamate. I believe that the current epidemic of diseases, such as bromyalgia, attention decit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and chronic fatigue syndrome, and huge rises in reported cases of neurodegenerative diseases, migraine symptoms, asthma, and gastrointestinal diseases are all directly related to the rise in MSG consumption. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex Heres another dangerous ingredient to avoid: monosodium glutamate, otherwise known as MSG. You may think you already know everything there is to know about MSG, but I bet you had no idea of the neurological damage caused by MSG that will be revealed in this section. You probably also didnt know that this dangerous chemical is frequently hidden in other ingredients. Ill also reveal a massive cover-up involving MSG manufacturers, industry groups and the FDA thats designed to conceal the truth about this dangerous ingredient while protecting food industry prots. But before we get there, lets cover the basics of MSG and why you should avoid it in your diet. There are two books I highly recommend on the subject of MSG: In Bad Taste: The MSG Syndrome: How Living Without MSG Can Reduce Headache, Depression and Asthma, and Help You Get Control of Your Life by George Schwartz, M.D. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills by Russell Blaylock Both books are highly informative and go far beyond the information I present here. I will be quoting from both, but I strongly recommend that if you want to learn more about the toxicity of MSG, get these books yourself and read them cover to cover.
What is MSG?
MSG is a drug added to our foods that causes widespread toxicity. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex MSG is a chemical avor enhancer. It adds a sweetness and depth to virtually any food or beverage, and it is widely used throughout the food industry to enhance the avors of processed foods that would otherwise taste at and bland. And herein lays the problem: processed food is typically so dead that most people wouldnt buy it if the taste wasnt somehow chemically enhanced. So food processors depend on MSG to make their foods appealing. Thats why food manufacturers continue to deny any health risk associated with the consumption of MSG -- because if they had to stop using this chemical, their foods would taste terrible!
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The problem is that MSG is also classied as an excitotoxin, which means it belongs to a class of chemicals that damage nerve cells by overexciting them. It enhances taste by penetrating the taste bud cells on your tongue and overexciting those cells to create a sensory taste experience. The problem is that MSG doesnt stop at the tongue. It continues through the bloodstream and can overexcite nerve cells throughout your nervous system. MSG was given the name excitotoxin when these effects were noticed by researchers decades ago: While MSG has been used as a avor enhancer for a very long time, the discovery of its adverse physiological effects can be attributed to a chance discovery in 1957 by two British ophthalmologists, Lucas and Newhouse, who were studying a rare eye disorder. They were attempting to improve the condition in test animals by feeding monosodium glutamate, aspartate and other metabolic products to mice, based on the idea that these substances can be used as fuel by some nerve cells. What they found was that the mice who received glutamate and aspartate suffered severe destruction of the cells in the retina, and that the damage was worse in newborn animals than adult animals. The greatest damage occurred with exposure to glutamate. Their report went virtually unnoticed, even though monosodium glutamate had been added to processed foods in massive quantities since the late 1940s. In 1968 another research scientist, John Olney, repeated the experiment hoping to use the ability of MSG to destroy retinal cells to study neural connections dying within deep brain structures, a common technique in neuroscience. What he found shocked him: the MSG not only destroyed retinal cells, it also killed vital neurons within the brain itself. On further study, Dr. Olney recognized that the MSG was killing neurons by exciting them to death. Based on this observation he named the process excitotoxicity. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills The name excitotoxin now applies to a class of chemicals that overexcite nerve cells in the human body, causing damage or death to those cells. One of the side effects of excitotoxins is they also enhance the avor of foods by overexciting the sensory cells on the tongue: Excitotoxins are taste or avor enhancers that release glutamate and other brain-active amino acids, such as aspartate and cysteine. The best known example of an excitotoxin is monosodium glutamate (MSG). High blood levels of MSG can cross the normally protective blood-brain barrier. If glutamine levels are inappropriately raised, neurons re abnormally and at higher levels, brain cells begin to die (Shefrin 1999; Dodd 2002). Both oxygen deciency and lack of fuel (hypoglycemia) interfere with the energy production of brain cells and make them susceptible to excitotoxin damage. As noted in a review article by Blaylock (1999) in Medical Sentinel, and other articles, excitotoxin damage may be an important factor in the development of neurological diseases, including Parkinsons disease (Shefrin 1999; Merims et al. 2001). - Disease Prevention and Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation
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Many people associate MSG with Chinese food, and its true that many Chinese restaurants add ridiculous amounts of MSG to their dishes in order to make them taste more appealing. But MSG is also frequently used in many food products found at your local grocery store. Many meat products, such as bacon and especially breakfast sausages, are made with MSG as a avor enhancer. Beef jerky products almost always contain MSG. Salad dressings usually have it as well, and many instant meal mixes and powders use MSG. In the sections that follow, I will discuss and reveal the food products that contain MSG. Ill show you the list of diseases and disorders that appear to be caused by MSG, and Ill reveal the dirty politics behind the MSG industry and the FDAs reluctance to ban this ingredient or even require its accurate labeling on food products. Ill also show you how food manufacturers hide MSG in natural-sounding ingredients in order to mislead consumers. Lets begin by looking at the use of MSG by the food industry. The food industry, politics, prots, and MSG MSG is a popular additive that gained widespread use as a avor enhancer before its healthfulness came into question. However, many users probably wondered privately about the safety of this additive, since its most well-known side effect is Chinese Restaurant Syndrome -- a condition characterized by numbness, weakness, heart palpitations, cold sweat, and headache. In addition, animal studies show that MSG can cause brain damage, stunted skeletal development, obesity, and female sterility. It is on the FDA list of additives that need further study for mutagenic and reproductive effects. - Debra Lynn Dadd, Home Safe Home After MSG was rst discovered to enhance the taste of foods, the Ajinomoto Company was formed. This Japanese company now supplies the majority of MSG to food producers around the world. Following World War II, virtually all the major food manufacturers in the United States started adding millions of pounds of MSG each year to their processed, rened foods. It was originally thought to be perfectly safe, of course, and it certainly made their processed foods taste better. The use of MSG has since doubled every decade to the point where 262,000 metric tons were produced by 1972. It wasnt until the 1960s when doctors and researchers nally began to conduct experiments with laboratory animals and MSG. The results of that research were rather disturbing. (See the next section for details.) By the late 1960s, food manufacturers voluntarily removed MSG from baby foods following a public outcry, but since then, they have fought a defensive battle, claiming that MSG is perfectly safe, funding scientic studies that distort research results to prove no harm is caused by MSG, and forming independent industry groups to push pro-MSG propaganda.
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You see, at this point, the food producers couldnt go back to producing bland, tasteless foods. The American public had gotten used to chemically enhanced foods, and as a result, the food industry had to aggressively defend the only ingredient (MSG) that kept them in business: When MSG was rst being added to foods as a taste-enhancing substance, glutamate receptors had not been discovered, and no one knew that excess glutamate could cause brain cell death. The food industry invested millions of dollars in developing the use of MSG and hydrolyzed protein. It was only after tons of these taste enhancers were being added to our foods and beverages that scientists had their rst hint that excitotoxins carried a serious side effect. They were so toxic, in fact, that researchers renamed them excitotoxins. Abundant research had demonstrated that these excitotoxins not only damaged the cells of the retina of the eye, but also that they were extremely toxic to the nerve cells in the hypothalamus and other vital areas of the brain. It was only through the diligent efforts of Dr. John Olney that the food industry was forced to halt the obvious use of excitotoxin food additives in baby foods. But, as we have seen, no one warned pregnant mothers that the MSG laced food they were eating could endanger the developing babies still in their womb. And more and more excitotoxin taste enhancers were being added to adult foods and even toddler foods all the time. Again, this was despite the rapid accumulation of research data demonstrating these previously known dangers and even new dangers associated with using excitotoxins in food. But by this time MSG was not only being added to virtually every processed food, it was being promoted in cookbook recipes as well. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills It didnt matter what dangers were discovered by scientic researchers: food producers needed their MSG to make their food products appealing: Because MSG alters a sensory modality -- the taste buds -- and the overall gustatory apparatus of the mouth, it modies reality and produces or intensies sensations. MSG may be used to mask unpleasant avors, disguise spoilage, and provide a sense of freshness to food that is old. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex In this way, food manufacturing companies were economically addicted to MSG and couldnt let it go. Yet all this time, researchers were conducting animal experiments on MSG that were showing alarming toxicity effects. What began as a small set of research papers began to grow...
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MSG shown to damage the liver, the brain, the circulatory system and more
With increased use of MSG by food producers, more and more people were beginning to show these symptoms. At least 50 million people in the United States show reactions to MSG, with varying degrees. But even those people who dont show an immediate reaction to MSG may be suffering long-term brain damage as a result of this ingredient, according to researchers: In a study where MSG was fed to infant mice, one single dose increased free-radical damage to the brain by 60 percent, an effect that lasted all the way to adolescence. This one dose also produced damage to the liver, endothelial cells, the circulatory system, and cells throughout the body. ...The mice exposed to MSG during pregnancy and early childhood did ne, but later in life they had more difculty performing mental tasks requiring logical thinking or memory. Scientists also found lowered levels of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that plays a large role in memory and learning, and of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that plays a role in attention. - Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers Further research revealed even more frightening toxic effects caused by MSG as well as the difculty in getting the FDA to actually do anything about protecting the public from this dangerous chemical: Despite this frightening discovery, MSG continued to be added to food in enormous amounts and cookbooks continued to recommend it as a taste enhancing additive for recipes. But the worst was yet to be disclosed about this compound. Some ten years [after the experiments performed by Lucas and Newhouse which showed that MSG destroys nerve cells of animal retinas,] John W. Olney, MD, a neuroscientist working at the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, repeated Lucas and Newhouses experiment in infant mice. His ndings indicated that MSG was not only toxic to the retina, but also to the brain. When he examined the animals brains he discovered that specialized cells in a critical area of the animals brain, the hypothalamus, were destroyed, after a single dose of MSG. The implications of Dr. Olneys ndings should have been earth-shaking to say the least. Why? Because millions of babies all over the world were eating baby foods containing large amounts of MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein. In feet, the concentrations of MSG found in baby foods was equal to that used to create brain lesions in experimental animals. Yet, food manufacturers continued to add tons of this excitotoxic additive to foods of all kinds, including baby foods. Even the governments public health watch-dog agency, the Food and Drug Administration, refused to take action. Dr. Olney ...informed the FDA of the real danger to human infants and encouraged them to take action. But they refused. His only recourse was to go public with what he knew to be true -- that MSG was a dangerous compound that should not be added to infant foods. It was only after his testimony before a Congressional committee that the food manufacturers agreed to remove MSG from baby foods. Instead of adding pure MSG they added a substance known as hydrolyzed vegetable protein that contains three known excitotoxins and has added MSG. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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MSG damages your health with small doses, taken over time
Also, the research was showing that it wasnt necessarily one large dose of MSG that would kill nerve cells: it was the frequent exposure to smaller doses over time: It has been shown that when using lower doses of excitotoxins many of these cells are severely damaged without actually dying. But, as a result of this damage, they operate at a much reduced level of efciency. Certainly, we want our brains to operate at peak efciency. Also, repeated injury to these damaged neurons will eventually kill them. Unfortunately, the only experiments to demonstrate these long termed effects in humans are being conducted on you, and me, and our families, by the food industry and the producers of aspartame and MSG - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills The extreme toxicity of MSG combined with its widespread use in the food supply resulted in virtually every consumer in the United State being exposed to it. Some 30 percent of the population demonstrate observable symptoms from MSG (see below for a complete list of symptoms associated with MSG syndrome,) although the research suggests the other 70 percent may be suffering some degree of permanent nerve cell damage as well. In any case, the problems caused by MSG are undoubtedly widespread: The evidence points to MSG sensitivity of epidemic proportions throughout the general population. The symptoms may be severe or vague: depression, headache, mild nausea, pressure around the eyes, tingling of the face, behavioral disturbances in children, and mood swings, accentuating those already present in adolescents and also in adults. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex MSG isnt the entire picture, either. When MSG is combined with other excitotoxins -- namely, aspartame -- the destructive results can be compounded: Unfortunately, MSG is not the only taste enhancing food additive known to cause damage to the nervous system. In fact, there is a whole class of chemicals that can produce very similar damage -- they all share one important property. When neurons are exposed to these substances, they become very excited and re their impulses very rapidly until they reach a state of extreme exhaustion. Several hours later these neurons suddenly die, as if the cells were excited to death. As a result, neuroscientists have dubbed this class of chemicals excitotoxins. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills With MSG shown to be toxic to the nerve cells in both animals and humans, its little wonder that it can be a causative factor in a wide variety of diseases and disorders. MSG is implicated in a long list of serious diseases such as asthma, hyperactivity, violent behavior, obesity, diabetes, reproductive problems and endocrine disorders. In the following sections, well explore the links between each of these diseases and MSG.
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With MSG shown to produce violent behavior in animals, and with MSG consumption so widespread among humans, this may be a contributing factor to the sharp increase in violence in the United States over the last several decades. Reports of rage reactions induced by MSG become clearer with an understanding of the neuroexcitatory effects of MSG. The 1984 McDonalds Massacre in San Ysidro, California, had an MSG-sensitive killer. This situation was analyzed in a scientic journal, the International Journal of Biosocial Research. Dr. Robert Hall from Chaminade University of Honolulu received the data about the MSG Massacre and concluded that the data supported a psychotic reaction to monosodium glutamate. The amygdala section of the brain often has been linked to rage reactions and is stimulated by MSG as well. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex
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Still, its far too early to be able to say with condence that MSG causes cancer, and theres no overwhelming scientic evidence that says this is not the case. If such a link is ultimately established, it will likely be due to the ability of MSG to damage the hypothalamus gland, which is critical for proper immune system function: Interestingly, a recent study indicates that MSG exposure during the suckling period of mice produces a severe defect in cell-mediated immunity when they reach adulthood. Cellmediated immunity is important in ghting viruses, bacteria and cancer. It was suggested that this defect in immunity was caused by damage to the hypothalamus induced by neonatal exposure to MSG. It is known that the hypothalamus plays a vital role in immunity. If this effect also occurs in humans exposed to MSG at an early stage of development, it could mean that they would suffer similar immune deciencies as adults, which would mean more infections and a higher incidence of cancer, since the immune system would not be as efcient in ghting these diseases. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Still, it is clear that MSG does produce free radicals in tissues. These free radicals, in turn, promote the activation and growth of cancerous cells within the body: Another food additive that has been shown to increase free-radical production is monosodium glutamate or MSG. This additive, used in the majority of processed foods, often in disguised names, has been shown to signicantly increase free-radical production, not just in the brain but in many other tissues as well. What makes it particularly dangerous is that this increase in free-radical production persists for prolonged periods of time following even a single dose of MSG. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life Regardless of whether MSG consumption can initiate cancerous tumors, it is very likely able to accelerate the growth of existing tumors. Accordingly, people who are currently battling cancer must take extra precaution to avoid exposure to MSG: MSG consumption, then, would pose a special danger to the cancer patient, since increased inammation and free-radical production can promote tumor growth as well as invasiveness and metastasis of cancerous tumors. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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Over the years, dozens more studies were conducted by various researchers (and Im not counting the studies conducted by the MSG industry groups, all of which showed MSG to be perfectly safe as you will see in a later section). Today, it is well demonstrated that MSG interferes with the endocrine system: There is a long history of endocrine, particularly pituitary and hypothalamic, effects produced by MSG in experimental animals. One review in 1998 shows alterations in hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal cortical function with likely genetic effects. The association with thyroid abnormalities, fertility and obesity problems, cortisone abnormalities, and other glandular functions has been suggested by many studies. Long-term human analysis will be necessary to conrm animal effects in humans. The stress-induced abnormalities in blood-brain barrier permeability suggest differing MSG effects dependent on existing states of relaxation or stresses. Another 1998 article demonstrates growth hormone impairment in rats that lasts throughout adulthood in experimental animals. The suggestive evidence for MSG-induced neuroendocrine effects is substantial, coupled with the observation of increased obesity in children. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex Studies on animals show that the effects of MSG are widespread and complex: Animals fed MSG not only produced less growth hormone, they also lacked the normal release pattern seen in all other mammals, including humans. ...Numerous studies using immature mice have shown that LH, FSH and prolactin (the reproductive hormones), HGH (growth hormone), ACTH (adrenal regulating hormone), and TSH (thyroid regulating hormone) were all decreased following exposure to MSG. These hormone deciencies were reected in the animals by small size, low reproductive ability, gross obesity and low metabolism. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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In all, whats clear is that MSG is highly toxic to the endocrine systems of laboratory animals (mammals), and the impact of MSG is not immediately obvious. In some cases, the effects dont appear until much later in life. Given that one of the frequently recorded effects of MSG on mammals has been a loss of reproductive capability, one can only wonder if the skyrocketing rates of infertility over the last few decades may be due, in part, to the parallel increase in the rates of consumption of MSG.
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additives. Since that conference in the 1970s, America has undergone this virtual epidemic of gross obesity, especially among its youth. One study discovered that animals fed MSG soon after birth preferred foods that were high in carbohydrates and low in nutritional value. Researchers also found that this fat could not be exercised off and was extremely difcult to remove through dieting, no matter how stringent. Again, this is reminiscent of the problem in our population. Today, most processed foods contain signicant amounts of glutamate, enough to produce injuries to our childrens brains similar to those seen in experimental animals. This is extremely important when you consider that, of all the mammals, humans are the most susceptible to physical damage from ingested MSG. We possess a sensitivity ve times greater than the mouse and twenty times greater than the rhesus monkey. With this enormous consumption of foods laced with MSG additives, it is no wonder that we have an obesity problem in this country, especially when you combine the hypothalamic lesion caused by MSG to the high-fat and -carbohydrate diets of young people. Of particular concern is the suggestion that MSG ingested by pregnant women may actually cause this lesion in children while they are still in the womb. ...Our children have become lab rats. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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Avoiding the apparent associated risk of these degenerative brain diseases is relatively straightforward: simply avoid MSG in the diet: High levels of excitotoxins within the brain appear to play a major role in Alzheimers disease. It is essential that individuals with a strong family history of Alzheimers disease and those having had a stroke or high blood pressure avoid excitotoxin food additives. The simplest way to do this is to restrict foods from your diet that contain excitotoxin taste enhancers such as MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and aspartame (NutraSweet). - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills From this, it seems reasonable to suspect MSG in the rising rates of Alzheimers disease that have appeared in Western societies over the last several decades. Although no proof is yet available that MSG causes Alzheimers in humans, there is little doubt that the worlds largest MSG / Alzheimers experiment is well under way -- and it is being conducted on the general public. Only an Alzheimers epidemic, it seems, will generate the level of public awareness and political courage needed to even consider banning monosodium glutamate from the food supply.
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The rst concerns about MSG and young children emerged in the 1970s when doctors began to notice rather bizarre disorders (like seizures) in children and managed to link them to dietary intake of MSG: Dr. Reif-Lehrer became especially concerned in 1976 when she encountered three children whose serious symptoms were traced to this food additive. The rst case involved a child who developed shudder attacks at the age of six months when he was started on adult foods. The attacks continued and the child was thought to have a form of epilepsy. Yet the medications ordinarily used for seizures were ineffective in his case. These symptoms of shudder-shiver were nally traced to MSG in the childs diet. The symptoms soon stopped after the diet was changed. They returned during a period of trial feedings with food known to contain high amounts of MSG. I have since discovered several other cases such as this one, in addition to nding children with unexplained true seizures. Her next case, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a 16-month-old child who developed what were described as shivers. The symptoms disappeared when her diet was changed to eliminate MSG. This case was conrmed by other physicians - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex Observers also learned that children could be exposed to the dangers of MSG through breastfeeding: ...No one had warned pregnant women of the danger to their developing babies caused by the MSG found within their own food. This danger would exist if the glutamate from the mothers blood entered the blood of their unborn baby. In 1974 Dr. Olney demonstrated that MSG, when fed to pregnant Rhesus monkeys, could cause brain damage to their offspring. Other researchers found similar results when pregnant rats were fed MSG. Yet millions of pregnant women continued to eat foods laced with MSG and other equally potent excitotoxins while the FDA remained silent. Following weaning from bottled or breast milk, most mothers begin feeding their babies food from the table. These foods frequently contain large amounts of MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Dr. Olney found that these children were receiving doses of MSG from the table food that equaled the dose used experimentally to produce severe brain cell destruction in animal experiments. ...Humans develop higher blood levels of glutamate following ingestion of MSG than does any other animal species known. Dr. Olney noted that: The amount of MSG in a single bowl of commercially available soup is probably enough to cause blood glutamate levels to rise higher in a human child than levels that predictably cause brain damage in immature animals. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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As you know by now, MSG was voluntarily removed from baby foods in 1969 by food manufacturers. The FDA never required this, however. It was only the potential risk of a public relations disaster that resulted in food companies pulling MSG from baby foods. Yet MSG and food manufacturers claim their ingredient is completely safe for children and pregnant mothers. A critical thinker can only wonder: if this is so, then why did they remove the ingredient from baby food? Regardless of the reason, MSG remains readily available to children through a variety of channels, most notably their schools: [MSG] is also a common element in the diet of children who eat ordinary canned and processed meals, not to mention fast-foods and school lunches. There is no regulation whatsoever on the use of MSG in school cafeterias despite its possible ill effects. In fact, current trends allow fast-food pizza and hamburger chains to sell their MSG-laden products during the childrens lunch hour. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex It is nothing short of astounding that 35 years after the discovery that MSG causes brain damage in mammals, the FDA has still refused to take any action whatsoever in banning this ingredient or, at the very least, warning that pregnant mothers and breastfeeding mothers should not consume this ingredient. This just goes to demonstrate the unprecedented level of negligence of this government agency which is supposed to protect the public from unsafe foods and drugs, not promote toxic foods and sweep the evidence under the rug. Ill talk more about this in MSG cover-up later in this section.
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This energy protection also seems to exist in humans. The defenders of MSG safety frequently cite a study in which human volunteers were fed large doses of MSG combined with a mixed meal of protein and carbohydrates. Only 10 percent developed a headache. Most were unaffected. But when the study was repeated using 14 human volunteers, this time keeping the subjects without food overnight, all developed headaches, tightness in the chest, and other symptoms of neurological toxicity related to MSG. So merely going without food overnight can greatly increase the toxicity of MSG. In another study involving 1,529 persons, it was found that 25 percent developed adverse symptoms after eating foods containing MSG. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills In practical terms, this means that even if you never experienced MSG-like symptoms before going on a low-carb diet, you may be especially susceptible to them after adopting the diet. Did you experience any shifts in your mental function (clarity, moods, etc.) when shifting to a low-carb diet? Does your diet still contain MSG and other ingredients made with MSG? If you answered yes to both questions, it may be due to the increased toxicity of MSG in a lowcarb lifestyle. Once again, this is a missing piece of the puzzle that helps explain some of the mysterious side effects some people experience on a low-carb diet. It isnt the low-carb diet thats to blame: its the MSG still in your diet!
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In fact, the following food additives always contain some amount of MSG: Monosodium Glutamate Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein Hydrolyzed Protein Hydrolyzed Plant Protein Plant Protein Extract Sodium Caseinate Calcium Caseinate Yeast Extract Textured Protein Autolyzed Yeast Hydrolyzed Oat Flour The primary keywords to look for are: Hydrolyzed Autolyzed Yeast Extract Ive examined the ingredients labels of thousands of foods, and these are the most common names for MSG-containing ingredients. So, as a rule, dont buy any foods listing these ingredients, and especially avoid foods that blatantly state they contain monosodium glutamate. The following ingredients may contain MSG, but dont always: Textured protein Carrageenan or vegetable gum Seasonings or spices Flavorings or natural avorings Chicken, beef, pork, smoke avorings Bouillon, broth or stock You read correctly: the ingredient spices can contain MSG! This makes it extremely difcult to acquire MSG-free foods. Since the FDA has allowed food companies to engage in this bizarre food labeling shell game, consumers are not able to accurately determine how much MSG is actually contained in food products.
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Corruption at the FDA favors food companies, not the safety of consumers
When consumers are confused and the nutrition facts label can be used to obscure the facts, it is the food producers who win -- in terms of prots. By not requiring MSG to be clearly listed on food labels, the FDA has condoned the practice of hiding this proven excitotoxin in everyday foods, thus contributing to untold suffering in the human population. Worse yet, the FDA still allows foods containing MSG to be labeled as all natural foods: Few people are aware that products containing hydrolyzed vegetable protein frequently are advertised as all natural. While MSG must be specically listed on food labels, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, which contains MSG, may be designated simply as natural avorings or in some cases spices or natural seasonings. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex Thats not exactly what you had in mind for the word natural, was it? The fact that a potent nerve toxin can legally be labeled natural avorings just goes to show you how twisted our food industry and regulatory agencies have become. The intention of all this is obvious: to mislead consumers and get people to buy products they wouldnt touch if those products were honestly and accurately labeled. The FDA gets away with this by explaining that the ingredient listed isnt pure MSG and, therefore, doesnt have to be listed as MSG: If MSG is added to a food product during its processing it will be listed on the label. However, it is permitted to list hydrolyzed vegetable protein on the label without mentioning that it may contain up to 40 percent monosodium glutamate. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein or protein hydrolysate (as it is sometimes called) is classied by the FDA as a natural avoring. Therefore, a packaged food item might specify natural avoring in its list of ingredients without mentioning that the natural avoring consisted of hydrolyzed vegetable protein -which contains MSG. This method of labeling applies to any compound substance that may contain MSG. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex What makes all this worse is the fact that manufacturers typically add a combination of MSG-containing ingredients to their foods. This combination is far more toxic than any one ingredient alone: We also know that excitotoxins have a compounding effect when given together. For example, MSG, aspartate, and hydrolyzed vegetable protein given together in a single meal is much more toxic than when given individually. Many foods contain two or more of these excitotoxins. I have seen single frozen diet food dinners that contain MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and natural avoring together. Add a diet drink sweetened with NutraSweet and you have a single meal with four known excitotoxins. (Remember that hydrolyzed vegetable protein contains very high concentrations of two excitotoxins -glutamate and aspartate.) - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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Although not all of these behaviors and reactions in children can be blamed on MSG, there is little doubt that MSG promotes these symptoms and behaviors. A wise parent would remove MSG from the diets of their children, regardless of whether they are showing these symptoms.
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If you enjoy eating out, youre not going to like this section. Ill admit it is extremely inconvenient to try to avoid MSG in restaurants, because the only reliable way Ive found to accomplish this is to boycott all restaurants. I know, it sounds impossible, and Im not suggesting that its something everybody is up to doing. But in my own experience, I tried for years to eat at restaurants without getting migraine headaches from MSG. What I discovered is that: Waiters and waitresses are generally clueless about MSG. Some have never heard of it. And they certainly have no idea of the extent of its use in restaurant food. Many waiters and waitresses think made from scratch means mixing a commercially-produced soup powder with water and warming it up to make soup. At most restaurants, the cooks are even less informed about MSG than the waiters. They have no idea what ingredients are contained in the mixes they use to prepare foods for customers. Few restaurants have ingredients lists available for customers. To obtain these, you have to be a real pest, which usually ends up annoying the people youre dining with. Even upscale restaurants depend heavily on MSG and chemical taste enhancers. Just because the menu prices are sky-high doesnt mean they prepare their foods with fresh ingredients.
Why Chinese restaurants are actually the best place to avoid MSG
Amazingly, Ive found Chinese restaurants are the best places to eat if you want to avoid MSG, because they actually know what it is. If you ask, theyll make your dinner without it. Other restaurants, in contrast, have never heard of MSG or dont know whats in their mixes, and therefore they cant remove it. So even though most people associate MSG with Chinese food, Ive found that Chinese restaurants are practically the only place you can go to truly avoid MSG! (Just dont eat from their buffet. Buffet food items always contain MSG. All the poison you can eat!) Also, watch out for the dark sauces used by Chinese restaurants. Even if the cook doesnt add MSG to your stir-fry dish, the oyster sauce probably contains it anyway. Ive also found that black bean spicy sauces always contain MSG, even when the chefs swear they dont. How do I know all this? I have the gift of being especially sensitive to MSG. If I consume it, my head starts to feel ushed, and within an hour or so, Im usually experiencing an extreme migraine headache which lasts for hours (all night, usually). Meats, vegetables, seafood, seasonings, and soups served in any restaurant may contain MSG. Colonel Paul Logan of the National Restaurant Association has quoted an association survey indicating that three out of four of all good restaurant operators are now using Glutamate (Glutamate Manufacturers Technical Committee Publication: The Value of Glutamate in Processed Foods). Inquiries by my staff in 1987 to hundreds of franchised restaurants, cafeterias, and individual restaurants about their use of MSG brought a variety of responses. Many were vague in their answers, citing trade secrets, while others listed foods they served that contained MSG while still not knowing it was an element in hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Some who answered my questions were genuinely concerned about the widespread adverse reactions to MSG. However, frequently the chefs did not know which sauces contained MSG or hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP). Huge amounts of MSG are still used. I have discovered that in the ner restaurants, the soup bases, clam broths, and breadings are all places to nd MSG. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex
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Indian restaurants are hazardous when it comes to avoiding MSG. Curries frequently contain outrageous doses of MSG. The worst MSG headache of my life occurred after eating a curry dish at an upscale Indian restaurant. It felt like my head was about to burst with each heartbeat. Tibetan foods and other Eastern foods also frequently contain MSG. Egg rolls always contain MSG, and the vast majority of restaurant soups contain MSG: Adults, including pregnant women, frequently ingest large concentrations of MSG and other excitotoxins in their food. In one study it was found that some restaurants add as much as 9.9 grams of MSG to a single dish, enough to produce brain damage in experimental animals. Liquids containing MSG, such as soups, are absorbed faster and more completely than solid foods. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills It may not be what you want to hear, but the fact is that if you eat at restaurants, you are eating MSG, whether you like it or not. Its impossible to avoid. This is why I no longer eat at restaurants except in rare circumstances. The one safe dish to order? Fresh salad topped with grilled salmon. No dressing. (Practically all salad dressings contains MSG, too.) But practically everything else on the menu contains either MSG or other metabolic disruptors such as hydrogenated oils. Truly, restaurants are terrible places to eat if you want to promote your good health. They serve toxic ingredients to unwary customers under questionable conditions of food safety and cleanliness. The only good restaurant is a locally-owned, ethical restaurant run by someone you know and trust. All restaurant chains are serving excitotoxins and metabolic disruptors to customers.
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I dont believe in conspiracy theories, except for the ones that are true. When it comes to MSG, theres a massive, decades-long cover-up well underway. The FDA is colluding with food companies and MSG manufacturers to continue to allow MSG to be widely used in foods, even as they are well aware of the research proving its toxicity. This pro-MSG effort is well organized, well funded and far reaching. There are billions of dollars at stake. The FDA and food producers arent going to let the health concerns of pesky consumers get in the way of windfall prots. To accomplish the cover-up, the MSG industry engages in scientic fraud by paying selected researchers to conduct studies carefully constructed to show that MSG is safe. In one such study, researchers funded by the MSG industry distorted test results to prove that high doses of MSG werent harming infant monkeys. In reality, the MSG was causing the monkeys to vomit, which resulted in the MSG being expelled from their bodies before it could harm them. This fact was never even mentioned by the MSG industry-funded research until years after the research was published: In 1971 Dr. W.A. Reynolds and coworkers reported that they were unable to conrm Dr. Olneys previous ndings that MSG fed to infant monkeys consistently resulted in injuries to specic areas of the hypothalamus. That is, they found that large doses of MSG fed to newborn monkeys had no toxic effect on infant monkeys brains. Dr. Olney became suspicious of the study when he realized that they were feeding massive doses of MSG to these infant animals. In his experience, such doses almost always caused the animals to vomit. But if the monkeys did indeed vomit, Dr. Reynolds data would be completely invalid since little of the MSG would have actually been absorbed. Later, at a public hearing, Dr. Olney asked Dr. Reynolds if their monkeys vomited. In front of a large audience she admitted that they had. Yet, a few months later, when the report appeared in Science magazine, no mention was made of vomiting, a critical omission. Dr. Olney wrote Science magazine a letter asking why this vital data was omitted. They referred his letter to Dr. Reynolds. This time she denied that the animals had ever vomited. Four years later Reynolds and others published another paper admitting that the monkeys had vomited after feeding them large doses of MSG. But of even greater importance, for the rst time they admitted that their monkeys were under anesthesia throughout the entire experiment, using a drug called phencyclidine. This powerful anesthetic agent is also one of the most potent antagonists of glutamate receptors known. (It is related to MK-801.) This drug is known to totally prevent MSG lesions of the hypothalamus. Therefore, their entire experiment was invalid from the beginning. It is hard to believe that they were unaware of this protective effect of phencyclidine. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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The following relates the story of Dr. John Olney and his efforts to warn the FDA about the potential dangers of this food additive: When Dr. John Olney discovered the harmful effects of food borne MSG on the brains of developing animals he attempted to alert the FDA concerning this danger. He assumed that they would welcome his information with open arms and open minds. But he was soon to learn that government protected industries can be formidable foes. Dr. Olney stated that soon after he had published the results of his experimental ndings on the toxicity of MSG in 1969 he came under tremendous re from various directions. A multitude of papers were published attacking his data, claiming that when his experiments were repeated in their labs no toxicity was found. But he found that these detractors all had one thing in common, in that they were all afliated in one way or another with the Glutamate and/or food industries. Further, he noted, one group of food industry apologists wrote an indignant letter to the scientic publication Science claiming that Dr. Olneys experiments were invalid because he had used baby animals and baby animals were inappropriate subjects for the study because they had immature enzyme systems that made them especially vulnerable to glutamate toxicity. Incredibly, this was at a time when the food industry was adding large amounts of MSG to baby foods. Their logic escapes the rational mind, unless it is motivated by industrial prots. Dr. Olney, realizing the terrible implications for the health of millions of babies, continued his ght to alert the public and the FDA concerning this danger. The FDA referred this tough issue to a government-sponsored Food Protection Committee in an effort to resolve the MSG/baby food controversy. One spokesman for the food and glutamate industries stated that even if MSG did indeed destroy the arcuate nucleus in the hypothalamus, it didnt matter because it was not known to have any functional signicance. Yet it was well known at the time that the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus played a vital role in the regulation and release of important hormones from the pituitary. The committee continued to declare MSG safe as a food additive even in baby foods. Dr. Olney states that at this point he began to look into the backgrounds of the members of the independent FDA committee and discovered that it was founded by, funded by, and totally controlled by the food industry and that most of the members of the subcommittee appointed to investigate the Glutamate /baby food issue had strong nancial ties with the glutamate and/or food industry. The committee chairman was receiving money from both industries at the time of the committee deliberations. Dr. George Schwartz discovered that a pamphlet put out by the FDA outlining the consumer facts concerning the safety of MSG as a food additive had in truth been compiled and published by The Glutamate Association, which describes itself as an organization of manufacturers, national marketers, and processed food users of glutamic acid and its salts, including monosodium glutamate. When Dr. Schwartz pointed this out to the FDA authorities they quietly removed the pamphlet from circulation. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills
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See, even when the FDA promises some sort of investigation into MSG, it turns out the board members appointed to conduct the investigation are, themselves, tied to the very industry they are supposed to be investigating. Its sort of like having Al Capone play the federal judge in a Chicago mob trial. The entire purpose of these investigations is to create the appearance of an investigation when, in fact, the whole thing is a political charade.
The real reason why the FDA wants to make sure consumers keep eating MSG
The FDA, along with the MSG industry groups and corporations, are determined to keep the MSG scam running for as long as possible. It is generating enormous prots for MSG manufacturers and food companies. Better yet, from the point of view of the FDA, it is subsequently creating billions more in prots for pharmaceutical companies whose drugs are frequently prescribed to treat the very symptoms caused by MSG toxicity. In this way, the FDA has double the incentive to make sure the American public keeps consuming MSG in mass quantities and suffers the resulting health effects. If MSG were banned, drug company prots would plummet as MSGinduced diseases vanished. It is obvious that the FDA has been captured by the chief MSG manufacturer, the Ajinomoto company, the food industries and their public relations organization, The Glutamate Association. By producing a multitude of spurious studies purportedly showing that MSG is safe as a food additive they can say with impunity, The weight of the scientic evidence demonstrates that MSG is safe for human consumption. The public has the perception that the FDA, being a government organization designed and dedicated to quality assurance and safety, would never allow an unsafe product to be used by the food industry. In fact, most of us assume that the FDA is, if anything, too cautious. But in this instance, we have seen that powerful industrial giants have been able to capture a government agency and use it to promote an unsafe product. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills And: The FDA has serious internal problems in regard to MSG. Years of faulty and biased regulation has led to inaction. Tracking the money demonstrates how such faulty decisions were made in the past. It is a scandal. Through a Freedom of Information Act request of all FDA-consumer correspondence for the past ten years relating to monosodium glutamate and hydrolyzed protein, I obtained several letters from FDA ofcials advising MSG-sensitive people to avoid hydrolyzed proteins. The standard form letter response that was sent to consumers stated that symptoms of MSG reactions are generally mild and transient.
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In December of 1989, at a meeting with top FDA ofcials, I informed them of my concerns as a physician about adverse reactions to MSG. At this meeting those present were unaware that substances such as hydrolyzed protein could be labeled as natural avorings. When asked why they had not followed up on a single case report of an adverse reaction, I was asked if I would accept a plea of incompetence on the part of the FDA staff! Some people also have wondered why the FDA was so quick to look into the problems caused by tryptophan but have neglected problems caused by MSG. Whether the economic power represented by the Glutamate Association, the years of lobbying and false or deceptive scientic studies, and the entrenched, close-minded position of many in the FDA are the reasons is a matter of opinion. In my view, the foregoing factors begin to explain the years of neglect. In fact, until recently, the FDA sent out Glutamate Association propaganda to consumers requesting information about monosodium glutamate. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex
The health damaging effects of MSG may take time to produce symptoms
Its easy for the FDA to deny MSG is harmful to humans, since the harm caused by MSG is not so immediately obvious. As youve seen in the studies mentioned in earlier sections of this chapter, MSG is especially noted for causing dangerous long-term effects: One of the reasons why it is so difcult to convince the FDA bureaucrats of the connection between MSG and delayed brain damage in humans is because it may take years before clinical signs of neurological damage show up. This damage is slow and cumulative, with each dose of MSG or aspartate damaging a number of important brain areas. While a baby exposed to large doses of MSG or other excitotoxins may not show signs of brain damage at birth, they may do so many years later. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Even as the FDA continued the MSG cover-up, it occasionally collides with the truth about MSG and has to scramble to make it go away: In 1992 the FDA commissioned an independent review of the literature to determine whether or not it should seriously review the current use of MSG. At the public hearings which were held, two extreme views were offered: Consumers and support groups poured out their touching stories of lives forever altered by severe reactions to the use of MSG, while industry spokespersons touted its efcacy, its usefulness, and its apparent harmlessness. The Federation of the American Society for Experimental Biologys (FASEB) council issued its nal report in July of 1995. The executive summary, approximately twenty pages at the beginning of the report, illustrated ndings of harmful effects of MSG and dened the term MSG symptom complex as connected to symptoms veried to occur after oral exposure to MSG. This landmark report, Analysis of Adverse Reactions to Monosodium Glutamate, validates the adverse reactions that consumers have been reporting for years. The overall conclusion of the expert panel is that causality by MSG had, indeed,
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been demonstrated by scientic evidence. The body of the report repeated time and time again that more research was necessary to evaluate the harmful side effects of MSG, such as endocrine disruption, brain lesions, heart irregularities, emotional disorders, and so on. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex Did the FDA forward the report to the Associated Press and put out a warning about MSG? Of course not. The report was buried and has long since been forgotten. No amount of evidence can sway the actions of an agency entrenched in a philosophy of protecting industry prots at all cost.
The FDA makes sure the prejudiced Glutamate Association is invited to all inquiries
Accordingly, any time an investigation or meeting regarding MSG is about to take place, the FDA invites the Glutamate Association to get involved: It appears that the Glutamate Association has a cozy working relationship with the FDA. In fact, any time someone challenges the safety of MSG or hydrolyzed vegetable protein, the Glutamate Association is invited to give its defending testimony. If the FDA really wants an unbiased view it should seek the advice of scientists who have no connection at all to the manufacture and industrial use of MSG. But they rarely do. Another way the FDA works with the Glutamate Association is by yielding to their lobbying efforts to change the labeling laws so that the words monosodium glutamate are not required on food labels unless it contains 100 percent pure MSG. Also MSG need not even be mentioned by any name if one product containing pure MSG is only used as an ingredient in another food. For example, if broth is used to make a soup, and the broth contains pure MSG, MSG does not have to be listed as an ingredient. But if the broth is sold alone, it must appear on the label. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Doctors and authors criticizing MSG have also come under repeated attacks from the MSG industry. The author of one of the books mentioned here was sued for $4 million by one food manufacturer, for example. The sort of action taken against people who speak out against MSG is reminiscent of the movie, The Insider in which a lone tobacco scientist wanted to share the truth about cigarette companies and their manipulation of nicotine in their products in order to addict customers. In fact, there are strong parallels between the tobacco industry and the MSG industry. Both industries manufacture a product that causes widespread disease. Both industries are well funded and bankroll fraudulent scientic studies to support their baseless positions. Both industries have tremendous political inuence in Washington, and both industries manufacture a product that consumers actually enjoy consuming. It also seems both industries will stop at nothing to make sure their product continues to be legal to sell to unwary consumers, regardless of the health consequences.
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The primary difference between the two industries is that the tobacco industrys mirage vanished, and now the vast majority of scientists recognize that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health. MSG hasnt yet been widely recognized as a threat to health, but that knowledge is spreading quickly, thanks to the Internet and publications like this one. Personally, I intend to pursue this issue until MSG is banned outright as a food additive. That is the only acceptable outcome that would protect the health of consumers.
The MSG industry attacks doctors and authors who speak out against MSG
But back to the attacks on doctors and authors who speak out against MSG. Heres how the industry deals with these people: MSG had come under criticism periodically from various members of the medical profession, the research community, and consumer advocates. But by then the excitotoxin taste enhancing business had become a multibillion dollar enterprise. The Ajinomoto company, the primary manufacturer of MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein, in conjunction with a dozen American food manufacturers, decided to protect their interest by forming a powerful public relations rm known as the Glutamate Association. The number one contributor to this attack group was the Ajinomoto Company of Japan. The purpose of this group was not only to defend and promote the use of MSG and other taste enhancers, but to attack anyone who dared to point out the adverse health effects of MSG. They did this by bringing their own scientists into any area where a serious question about safety had been raised. In most cases consumer advocates are knowledgeable people who lack the scientic background to withstand an assault by a scientist steeped in the jargon of the pure and applied chemist. These attacks could be cruel and overwhelming and only those with thick skin and determination could withstand the assault. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills And yet, many people are determined to bring the truth about MSG to light: Scientists studying these problems have sometimes run into severe obstacles. As Dr. Gary J. Baker, the Australian asthma specialist, notes, The story needs to be told. This will include not only the side effects of MSG, but also the discrediting of the people honestly reporting these effects, the frustration many of us have had in nding funds to do the necessary further research and the anger at the regulatory bodies for ignoring this problem. - George R. Schwartz, M.D., In Bad Taste: The MSG Symptom Complex
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If youre curious to see some of the pro-MSG propaganda at work, look no further than the website constructed by the Anijomoto Company, www.MSGinfo.com, which recommends that everyone, even pregnant women, can safely eat MSG! Yes. If youre pregnant, you can feel condent about consuming foods containing monosodium glutamate. Because pregnancy is such an important time for you and your unborn child, extensive scientic research has been conducted to make sure that MSG is safe for both of you. No studies have ever found MSG to cause problems with reproduction, birth or the fetus itself. - Propaganda from the manufacturer of MSG, 2004
The blood-brain barrier explanation offered by the MSG industry is proven false
In reality, practically every study or argument claiming MSG is safe is built on gross distortions of science or facts about human metabolism. Many such studies claim MSG simply doesnt cross the blood-brain barrier -- a position that is readily proved false: Some critics of these studies charge that MSG does not enter the brain because of the blood-brain barrier. There are two problems with this argument. First, in the newborn the blood-brain barrier is incompletely formed and will allow MSG to enter the brain. And second, the hypothalamus, even in the adult, does not have a barrier. That MSG can enter the brain of newborn animals given MSG was shown by two researchers who demonstrated not only high blood levels but signicant elevations of brain glutamate lasting up to three hours after the dose was given. This has been conrmed by Dr. Inouye, who demonstrated the passage of radioactively labeled MSG into the neonatal brain following MSG injections. One of the problems in proving that MSG could cause major injuries to the hypothalamus was in explaining how it could injure neurons in this area when so few neurons of the glutamate receptor type were know to exist in the this tissue. But then it was only recently that glutamate was found to be the primary neurotransmitter in the hypothalamus. Using various staining methods, neuroscientists found that glutamate neurons connect to every major nucleus in the hypothalamus. Interestingly, these neurons were found to be sensitive to all glutamate-like compounds, such as NMDA, quisqualate, and kainate as well as aspartate and MSG. This indicates that a wide range of excitotoxins can destroy and affect these vital neurons in the hypothalamus. What this means is that glutamate type-neurons control every neuroendocrine function of the hypothalamus. This neuroendocrine function is designed to control the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, reproductive functions, gonadal function, body growth, and certain aspects of metabolism. But in addition, glutamate controls all the other functions of the hypothalamus, such as the biological clock, the autonomic nervous system, sleep-wake cycles, hunger and satiety, the emotions of anger and rage, and even consciousness itself. - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills Overall, what youre seeing in action here is a global, nancially motivated political con job that
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guarantees prots for food companies at the expense of untold human suffering. The players in this scam are the FDA, the MSG industry lobbying groups, MSG manufacturing companies and food producers who rely on MSG to make their foods taste appealing. It is part of what I call the chemical holocaust promoted by the FDA that harms Americans through toxic ingredients in their foods and drugs. It is of such magnitude that the fatalities of 9/11 are dwarfed in comparison. Whats so astounding about this is that it has been allowed to continue for so many decades. That has only been possible due to the sad fact that most people blindly trust the FDA, and that the FDAs inuence over all decisions relating to food and medicine is so widespread. Commercial interests do, indeed, run the show around here, and the FDA has shown itself to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for pharmaceutical makers and food companies who would sell arsenic to the public if they could make a buck doing it and if people didnt die so quickly that there was an obvious link to their products.
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Action Item:
Avoid MSG and all its aliases (autolyzed, hydrolyzed, yeast extract) in all foods.
Read more articles on MSG at: http://www.newstarget.com/msg.htmL
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Phytochemicals are of critical importance to your overall health. Across the kingdom of edible plants available at nearly every grocery store, you will nd a vast array of chemical compounds with healing properties that protect your body against virtually every modern disease: especially cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression, Crohns disease, obesity, and other disorders. When we turn to convenience foods, its easy to overlook the importance of getting these plants and their phytonutrients into your diet. In fact, in my experience, I found that it is virtually impossible to do so without taking some form of phytonutrient supplementation. Im not talking about taking isolated vitamins and minerals -- the benets of those products pale in comparison to the healing properties offered by whole food complexes and microalgae supplements. To get these benets, we have to actually eat these plants, or at least take them as whole food supplements and not as isolated vitamins or extracted chemical compounds: In order for phytochemicals to do their job, however, we need to eat enough plant foods, and far too few of us do. One review of over 200 studies that examined the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and cancers of the lung, colon, breast, cervix, esophagus, oral cavity, stomach, bladder, pancreas, and ovary, showed a statistically signicant protective effect of fruit and vegetable intake in 128 of 156 dietary studies. For most cancer sites, low fruit and vegetable intake produced about twice the risk of cancer. The review suggests that major public health benets could be achieved by substantially increased consumption of these foods. According to guidelines recommended by the National Cancer Institute, one must eat at least ve half-cup servings of fruits and vegetables daily to lower cancer risk. - Donald R. Yance, Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer Think about your own diet. Do you eat at least ve servings of fruits and vegetables every day? Most likely not. Few people do. And once you become fully aware of the considerable benets derived from eating these phytochemicals, youll want to immediately take steps to introduce them into your diet (Ill show you how...). But rst, lets take a look at phytochemicals and answer the two most obvious questions: what are they, and how do they impact your health?
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Phytochemicals are powerful, biologically active compounds found in plants. This biological activity can be extraordinarily helpful (in preventing cancer, for example), and the benecial effects of these phytochemicals occurs in concert with the full spectrum of nutrients found in each plant. In other words, you cant isolate one phytochemical and expect it to have the health benets of the whole plant. Studies on lycopene, for example, show it to be of limited value against prostate cancer when used in isolation, but when the entire tomato is consumed, prostate cancer risks plummet. Theres no doubt that certain natural substances found in many plants-called phytochemicals -- have the power to keep you well. Medical literature is saturated with epidemiological studies showing a direct correlation between low levels of plant foods in the diet and high rates of disease and untimely death. In one of the largest and longest-running studies, researchers at the Institute of Preventive Oncology in Tokyo proved, once and for all, that your diet ...is the primary factor in predicting health and longevity. Phytochemicals give a plant its color, avor, and smell, but more importantly, they are part of a plants natural defense system. Researchers have found that these same protective qualities can also boost your bodys disease-ghting, detoxifying, and antiaging abilities. While the benets are clear, research shows that Americans on the average eat only 25 to 35 percent of the ve to six recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables. Realistically, consuming ve to six servings is hard to do. Furthermore, what we do eat is usually cooked, canned, or frozen (neutralizing up to 90 percent of the vital nutrients). - Underground Cures Researchers are learning that nature is by far the most powerful healer in the universe. No drug can compete with the healing powers of phytochemicals. Not that pharmaceutical companies arent trying, of course: theyd love to isolate chemicals from broccoli plants, for example, and sell them as anti-cancer drugs. The catch is that isolated chemicals dont work as well as whole plants, which contain hundreds of phytochemicals that researchers havent even identied. The healing powers of plants is far beyond the scope of todays technology, and certainly beyond the philosophy of conventional medicine, which continues to be entrenched in the germ theory of medicine and disease, in which one magic chemical (such as penicillin) will cure a particular ailment. In nature, however, we see that it is a spectrum of phytochemicals that works in concert to protect against cancer, boost cardiovascular health, improve longevity and produce a bewildering array of other healthful benets: What scientists found -- and are still nding -- was that a single fruit or vegetable contains thousands of phytochemicals in trace amounts that interact in complex but complementary ways to prevent certain diseases and boost overall health. It is awesome to think that every bite of apricot, every leaf of a green leafy vegetable, every mushroom contains a rich chemical stew that can, among other things, block, retard, suppress, or ush away carcinogens; lower serum cholesterol and decrease arterial plaque; enhance the immune system; ght the effects of aging. There are hundreds of different phytochemicals, although only a small percentage have thus far been identied in nutritional laboratories. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods
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The real story on phytochemicals is truly just beginning to unfold in the Western world. Its a story that can only be humbling to conventional doctors, drug company researchers, and perhaps even the corrupt ofcials at the FDA. Because the story says that nature is far smarter than human beings when it comes to reversing cancer, improving health, and preventing serious diseases. The humble broccoli plant, for example, contains hundreds of phytochemicals that go far beyond the grasp of even the most well-educated conventional doctor. The broccoli plant can reverse cancer in ways that anti-cancer drugs cant even approach. Its available for just a few dollars a pound (rather than thousands of dollars per pound, which is what pharmaceuticals cost) and has no harmful side effects whatsoever. No wonder the discovery of phytochemicals is disturbing to drug companies! If people knew the true benets of these phytochemicals and frequently consumed them, few people would need drugs. Personally, I live my life without any drugs whatsoever: no prescription drugs, no over-thecounter drugs, and no recreational drugs. Not even caffeine. Antioxidant vitamins provide some of the cancer-ghting prowess of fruits and vegetables, but phytochemicals play just as big a role. We are now learning that the same chemicals that protect plants from viruses, bacteria, and fungi protect us from cancer. For example, people who drink green tea, which contains a phytochemical called epigallocatechin gallate, have a lower risk of liver, lung, skin, esophageal, and urinary cancer. People who eat large amounts of cooked tomatoes, which are rich in the cancer-ghting chemical lycopene, have a lower risk of prostate, cervical, breast, and colon cancer. Eating broccoli, cabbage and other members of the cole family offers protection against a broad array of cancers. The fact that the phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables are potent anticancer agents helps explain why cancer studies involving vitamin supplements have had such lackluster results: The pills contain only a fraction of what the plants have to offer. Until researchers can identify and encapsulate all the myriad healing substances found in plants, it is far wiser to eat the whole foods themselves. This way, you will be getting all their known cancer-ghting nutrients -- plus all those yet to be identied. - Artemis P. Simopoulos, M.D., The Omega Diet Its important to remember that these phytochemicals are not vitamins or minerals. These are other chemical compounds that, technically, make up the plants own immune system: Phytonutrients are chemicals present in plants that make the plants biologically active. They are not nutrients in the classic sense, but they are what determines a plants color, avor, and ability to resist disease. Researchers have identied literally thousands of phytochemicals and have also developed the technology to extract these chemical compounds and concentrate them into pills, powders, and capsules. These are called nutraceuticals -- the newest type of dietary supplement. - James F. Balch, M.D., A to Z Guide To Supplements
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I will discuss phytochemical supplements later in this section. As you can imagine, with the research and publicity showing these phytochemicals to be so protective against diseases like cancer, food producers are rushing to add them to their products. Most of these food products, however, remain junk foods despite the added dose of phytochemicals: Nutraceuticals can also concentrate the best of food chemicals for daily consumption. Since only 9 percent of Americans eat ve servings of fruits and vegetables a day, these supplements are playing an increasingly important role in our nations health. There are phytochemical-enriched foods, for example snack bars fortied with soy phytochemicals (phytoestrogens), nutraceutical-enriched margarine to lower blood serum cholesterol, as well as phytochemical-enriched candy for children who dont care for vegetables. - Earl Mindells Vitamin Bible By far, the best place to get these phytochemicals is from the foods themselves, not from enriched food bars or candy. Besides, the quantity of phytochemicals added to these foods is usually very tiny. It is also based on isolated phytochemicals which offer limited health benets compared to the whole plant. Certain whole plants, it turns out, offer extraordinary health benets attributable to their phytochemical content.
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People would be far better off to just eat the plants in their natural form: There are hundreds and hundreds of phytochemicals in plant foods that help prevent cancer. The chemicals that plants synthesize for self-protection against sunlight and insects and to help maintain their own growth enhance human health as well. Over the last twenty years, researchers have consistently found that those who eat the most vegetables and fruits have the lowest rates of cancer. Research has also shown that animals given vegetables and fruit before and after exposure to carcinogens are less likely to develop cancer. In a recent study involving the intake of vegetables, fruits, and related nutrients in relation to the risk of premenopausal breast cancer, a strong inverse association was found between high intake of these nutrients and a low incidence of cancer. ...The implications of this data are profound. Ultimately, they could be used to design a diet that would not only provide increased protection against cancer, but also serve as an adjunct therapy for individuals with cancer. - Donald R. Yance, Herbal Medicine, Healing & Cancer So why do these phytochemicals have such protective effects in humans anyway? Because they are created by plants as part of their own immune systems. These plants, like every living thing, need protection against free radical damage, viruses, pests and other health risks. They accomplish this by creating their own phytochemicals that protect them in extraordinary ways. In plants, phytochemicals occur in minute amounts -- trace amounts, as scientists say -- but they interact in complex but complementary ways to ght the stress inicted on plants by intense sunlight, or by insects, or by fungus or mold, or by virus invasions, or by atmospheric pollution. They actually toughen the cells of the plant to ward off deterioration and toxic inuences. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods In this way, plants are potent pharmaceutical factories that naturally and freely produce a vast array of chemicals that protect against cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other serious health disorders. Growing a garden is like having a billion dollar pharmaceutical factory in your backyard, but the drugs that come out of this factory dont have negative side effects! (And you dont have to pay a fortune to get them, either.) It is truly humbling to consider the reality that nature has already provided everything we need to be healthy human beings. We dont need drugs, we dont need the FDA, and we dont even need to try to isolate and name every single health-enhancing chemical found in these plants in order to benet from them. All we really need is to recognize the wisdom of nature and act on that wisdom by eating a variety of plants that contain benecial phytochemicals. We can also supplement our diets with whole food complexes made from the most powerful of these plants, which I will reveal in a later section. Phytochemicals offer the same protection to the creatures that eat plants -- from the rabbit munching on the leaves of wild broccoli to the toddler eating her spinach because her mother tells her she must. Phytochemicals help humans fend off cancer, reduce heart disease, improve strength and energy, and bestow longevity by neutralizing the free
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radicals. Free radicals are loose cannons -- specically, they are molecules with unstable electrons -- that destroy cells by damaging their membranes. ...Phytochemicals arrest this kind of damage. They wield antioxidants that scavenge the free radicals and prevent them from damaging cells. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods It is not necessary that we name all the phytochemicals in these plants in order to benet from them. In Western scientic thinking, the idea of reductionism remains dominant. Reductionism says that we can best understand nature by breaking it down into smaller and smaller parts. Western medicine follows the same line of reasoning when it attempts to isolate and name every phytochemical found in everyday plants. If we could just get the full listing of everything in the plant, the thinking goes, we could master its healing effects and understand how it works. This reductionism thinking, however, is quite egoistic, if not downright delusional. When scientists identied the rst four vitamins, they thought they knew everything there was to know about plantbased nutrition. Then along came other vitamins, and then newly-identied minerals, and then later, these phytochemicals. At every step, science remains behind the curve in understanding the true nature of plants and how they deliver healing benets to the human body. I suspect you could catalog and name every single chemical in a healing plant and you still wouldnt understand how it works its healing nature. There are elements at work that cant be seen under a microscope or targeted through a chemical assay. In fact, I believe that much of the healing effect from plants is granted through the vibrational character of these plants, not merely their chemical compounds. Thats why you cant extract a specic chemical from a plant and expect it to offer the same benets as the whole plant. Only the real thing contains all of the unknown healing factors that Western scientists havent even begun to identify. Reductionism is a dead end. You cant understand plants by breaking them into smaller and smaller parts. In fact, the real answer lies in precisely the opposite direction: zoom out and look at the whole plant and how it interacts with the whole body. This is why a holistic view of healing produces far better results than the reductionist view practiced by the vast majority of conventional doctors.
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Getting back to the protective effects of phytochemicals, it is curious to note that most of the excitement over the healing benets of these chemicals seen today is based on the reductionistic view of plants. They are benecial to health only because they contain these amazing chemicals, most researchers believe: Phytochemicals can be said to have pharmacologic actions -- predictable activity that can be isolated and dened as pushing a body process in one direction or another. But, being natural constituents of foods rather than concentrated synthetics, they provide their helpful activity without the downside of possible toxic injury or unpleasant side effects -- and in most cases, with the bonuses of nutritious fuel and a tasty experience along the way. This type of substance is being discovered in a wide range of foods we already value nutritionally, and its exciting to know that these foods can provide additional healthenhancing and disease-ghting benets not previously known or understood. Literally hundreds of these substances are currently being investigated. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense In reality, we dont need to know their names. We dont need to list them on a chart. Im not knocking the research, because I think the fact that researchers are studying plants is a step in the right direction. But I am knocking the idea that the healing effects of these plants are only contained in these specic chemicals. In reality, there are other things at work here; things that we cant even begin to understand. Yet, notice that much of the discussion of phytochemicals focuses on them as being isolated substances, and there is a seemingly desperate rush to isolate, name and categorize all the phytochemicals under the sun: These foods are loaded with protective compounds called phytochemicals. Unlike vitamins and minerals, which are essential for preserving health, phytochemicals actually stop changes in the body that can lead to disease. - Bottom Line Yearbook 2002 Flaxseed oil also contains lignans, antioxidant phytochemical compounds that are believed to be hormone precursors. Lignans may bind to estrogen receptors in breast tissue and interfere with estrogens cancer-promoting activity there. Studies show that women who excrete more lignans in their urine (presumably from increased consumption of lignans), have much lower breast-cancer rates. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense These antioxidant phytochemicals form the water-soluble colors of vegetables, fruits, grains, leaves, and bark. There are many types of avonoids, and different plants contain varying concentrations of them. In fact, studies have shown that some avonoids possess up to 50 times more antioxidant activity than vitamins C and E -- and those in red grapes are more than 1,000 times more powerful than vitamin E in inhibiting oxidation of human LDL cholesterol! The following are just some of the avonoids you should at least know a little about because they can do a lot for your health! - Earl Mindells Vitamin Bible
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And take a look at all the scientic-sounding names given to the various classes of identied phytochemicals: Phytochemicals can do more than defend against cancer; they can also counterattack. Indol -- 3-carbinol, found in cabbage, cauliower, and other cruciferous vegetables, triggers enzymes that keep the form of estrogen linked to breast cancer from predominating. Allylic sulde, a phytochemical found in onions and garlic, enhances enzymes that detoxify carcinogens. Capsaicin, in hot chile peppers, and other phytochemicals in such spices as turmeric and cumin, keeps toxic molecules from attaching to DNA and perhaps initiating cancer. Diallyl disulde blocks and suppresses cancer agents, and it stimulates production of a detoxication enzyme called glutathione-S-transferase. You nd it in onions, leeks, scallions, chives, shallots, and, most powerfully of all, in garlic. Lignans in ax seeds, barley, and wheat are antioxidants that attack cell-damaging free radicals. Terpenes in citrus fruits increase the production and activation of a protein that interrupts the undifferentiated, out-of-control growth of breast-cancer cells in rats. Phytosterols in whole grains, legumes, and soy quite literally compete with the estrogens that promote cancer; while they dont destroy these cancer-causing agents, they do deect them from their path. Flavonoids in just about all fruits and vegetables -- and in wine -- block carcinogens access to cells and suppress malignant changes in cells. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods As you can see, many people view the phytochemicals in plants as nothing more than a natural source for drugs. My own metaphor of the pharmaceutical factory eludes to this sort of thinking, and I chose that metaphor precisely because its what most people believe about phytochemicals and plants. Unfortunately, even my own discussions of phytochemicals must, in some manner, follow Western-style reductionistic thinking. People believe that certain chemicals have certain healing effects, you see. But few people believe that plants operate at certain vibratory frequencies that are largely responsible for these healing benets. What is a chemical, after all, but a set of elements connected in a certain way? And chemical elements are, technically, nothing more than probability waves vibrating at various frequencies. If you had a powerful enough microscope and could zoom in all the way to the atomic structure of all chemicals, youd see absolutely nothing! Its all empty space and probability waves! (Just ask any physicist.) All matter is really just energy, and phytochemicals are actually energy patterns that interact with the human body in complex, yet subtle ways that offer astounding health benets that cannot be duplicated by drugging someone with an isolated chemical.
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No matter what view of medicine and healing you subscribe to, theres no doubt that plants containing these phytochemicals can offer powerful healing effects to those wise enough to eat them: Humans encounter invasive viruses just as plants do, and we, too, can be made very sick and weak by stress and pollution. The illnesses that result from these problems take a variety of forms: hypertension, cardiovascular sickness, arthritis, gastrointestinal disorders, cancer, and more. Phytochemicals in the plant foods we eat can provide the same health benets to humans that they provide to plants. Beyond the body-building, body-sustaining power of macronutrients, beyond the sparkplug capabilities of the micronutrients, phytochemicals provide essential raw materials for suppressing, retarding, even reversing not just illnesses but also the debilitating effects of stressful contemporary life and the degenerative effects of aging. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods The effect of these phytonutrients is so powerful that they not only prevent disease, they actually help reverse serious diseases like cancer: What is especially exciting about nutrition is not just the possibility of prevention, but the reversal, of diseases. The body has a tremendous ability to heal itself -- including repair of the damage to our DNA. Certain vitamins, minerals, and special phytonutrients can promote this healing and strengthen our cells so that they are better able to protect themselves against future injury. In fact, recent evidence has shown that a common herb can rescue injured brain cells even when taken hours after the injury occurs! - Russell Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life Phytochemicals have been shown to be especially effective at preventing and reversing various cancers: In 1989, a study investigating occurrence of second primary cancers came up with an interesting nding: that the risk of second primary cancers was 40 to 60 percent lower among patients whose diet had emphasized dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, cruciferous and yellow vegetables, and fresh fruits. Of course, people had always known these foods were good for you, but that these particular foods should be associated with these particular cancer-ghting statistics raised a ag - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods Phytochemicals have also been shown to be effective in controlling blood sugar and insulin sensitivity: A variety of phytonutrients derived from spices inuence insulin sensitivity. For example, American scientists have found that 1 teaspoon of cinnamon a day may help control blood sugar levels. The common spice appears to rekindle the ability of fat cells to respond to insulin and increase glucose removal (Hodge 2000). - Disease Prevention and Treatment
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Soy is perhaps the best-known source for phytochemicals that protect against cancer and other diseases. Thats why holistic nutritionists and alternative medicine doctors frequently recommend soy intake, especially for women. Science has since conrmed the suppositions about soys power. We have long known that soy is a rich source of protein; in fact, it is the only vegetable whose protein is complete. Now we know that it is loaded with phytochemicals -- with isoavones like genistein, cholesterol-lowering daidzein, protease inhibitors, phytic acids, saponins, phenolic acids, and intense concentrations of coumarins. This is a stew with potent properties as an antioxidant and with phytosterols that compete against the hormone-related cancers; its a hormone-deecting, tumor-suppressing, blood-thinning, virus-ghting, cholesterollowering warrior. Genistein, for example, has been shown to thwart cancer at every stage of its development. It interferes with enzymes that breed cancer genes, cuts off the blood vessels that act as supply lines to developing cancers, stunts the growth of cancer cells. At the same time that genistein is stopping cancer cells, it also stops the growth of cells that can clog arteries, scavenging the free radicals that oxidize LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol. That makes soy an antidote to artery deterioration; some documented studies even conclude that it helps rejuvenate old arteries. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods And yet, with these astounding benets attributed to phytochemicals, it is yet more surprising that researchers have really only begun to identify and understand these miracle-class chemicals.
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Even as these phytochemicals are identied, there remains a great mystery over how they operate. By what mechanisms do they offer these impressive health benets? The exact mechanism of action is not yet known for every single phytochemical identied to date. However, there are many observations and theories about them. Most of the compounds with some conrmed activity are anticancer (preventing or xing cell malignancy through various mechanisms), heart protective, anti-aging or antioxidant (blocking or repairing oxidative damage to cells), or anti-inammatory. Some of the cancer-preventive and -healing compounds seem to be quite sophisticated and wide-ranging in their actions. They may block the formation of malignancy, cut off the blood supply to malignant cells, boost production of cancer-ushing enzymes, or counteract carcinogens (cancer-forming or -triggering toxins) themselves, either by detoxifying or preventing them from establishing on target organs. They may also support our own repair mechanisms. - Robyn Landis, Herbal Defense Research into phytochemicals continues to this day, but some federally-funded research has been cancelled, most likely due to the political meddling of the FDA and pharmaceutical companies, who dont want scientists to reveal the truth that plants are, indeed, far more effective than drugs in combating disease: In 1990, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) launched a 5-year, $20 million program to learn more about biologically active plant chemicals (phytochemicals) in certain foods that may help to prevent cancer. Flaxseed was the rst of six foods to be studied. Preliminary results indicated that axseed oil can exert powerful anticancer properties if the oil is high in lignan precursors. Unfortunately, despite the incredible promise of preliminary results, the NCI canceled the project before it was completed. Nonetheless, there is substantial evidence that suggests axseed oil exerts signicant anticancer properties. - Michael T. Murray, N.D., The Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements Regardless of the political inuence, phytochemical research continues at universities throughout the United States and especially at centers of science and medicine around the world (who are not so tightly controlled by U.S. pharmaceutical interests). What they are nding, across the board, is that phytochemicals work best in concert, not in isolation.
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While its true that some phytonutrients are available as nutritional supplements, no matter how complete the supplements are, theyre bound to leave out many of the phytos that are found in fruits and vegetables. Not only that, but the mixture of these nutrients that you get naturally from carrots, blueberries, broccoli, and other plant foods provides some benets that generally cant be duplicated by a laboratory-produced pill. - Gale Maleskey, Natures Medicines This is why, as you will see, I strongly recommend that people who want to experience the health benets from phytochemicals supplement their diets with superfoods and whole food complexes. This is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, for optimum health, since probably 95 percent of Americans simply dont eat a sufcient quantity of healing foods to begin with. Because several thousand phytochemicals are currently known to exist, and because new ones are being discovered all the time, no [isolated] supplement can possibly contain all of the cancer-ghters found in a shopping basket full of fruits and vegetables - James F. Balch, M.D., A to Z Guide To Supplements
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In other words, you can squeeze a lot of broccoli -- which is rich in anti-cancer compounds -- into powdered broccoli capsules. A mere four capsules might contain the same phytochemicals as an entire serving of fresh broccoli orets. Through supplementation, you can intake large quantities of plant-based phytochemicals without needing to radically alter your eating habits. Of course, raw whole foods are always better, but in practical terms, whole food supplements are the only way most people are going to get these foods into their diets. I take whole food supplements before, during and after every meal. I dont put a piece of food in my mouth without rst taking some chlorella, spirulina, veggie tablets, powdered broccoli sprouts in capsules, sea vegetables in capsules, and so on. And the supplements I take are always made with a wide variety of whole foods, not isolated compounds. I aim for variety. In the sections that follow, I introduce my favorite whole food supplements and share my recommended sources for acquiring them. Truly, these whole food complexes need to be part of every persons diet. Theres simply no other practical way for people to experience the full benets phytochemicals have to offer!
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vegetables (particularly those with the water content removed and which are ground to the consistency of powdered sugar) are more digestible. In this form, it is estimated that 90 to 100 percent of phytonutrients, and all of their cancer-ghting properties, become available for absorption into the body (Mowatt 1998). - Disease Prevention And Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation Thats why I strongly recommend whole food concentrates (also called whole food complexes) as your supplementation choice. The trick is to nd products and supplements that actually contain ingredients they claim to contain, arent made with ller, and you can actually stomach. In this section, I discuss my most highly recommend superfoods: Jenny Lee Supergreens, The Ultimate Meal, chlorella, spirulina, whole food complexes, and sea vegetables.
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I also reveal sources of where to buy chlorella and spirulina at the sources page: http://www.chlorellafactor.com/chlorella-spirulina-33.html Note: I earn absolutely no money from any of the products or companies I recommend below. No company paid to be listed here. They are included solely due to the quality and value of the superfood products they offer.
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The taste of The Ultimate Meal, by the way, comes from the simple fact that it is not sweetened at all. Thats great news because it means theres no aspartame, no sucralose, and no sugar alcohols or high carbohydrate rened sugars in the mix. You can sweeten it in whatever way you like. Naturally, I recommend using stevia to sweeten it, but feel free to use whatever sweetener you like best. You will denitely need some sort of sweetener, since The Ultimate Meal is considered rather bitter thanks to the fact it contains a dense mixture of organic vegetables and greens, such as organic freeze-dried broccoli sprouts. This ingredient, all by itself, contains such powerful anticancer compounds that drug companies are probably drooling over it right now. The Ultimate Meal is one of my favorite whole food complexes. But there are many others available, both in capsule form and as powders. Berry Green is one such powder that is also recommended. Its made from freeze-dried organic fruits and vegetables. I have an entire report on Berry Green available at http://www.truthpublishing.com
Sea vegetables
Sea vegetables are outstanding sources for phytonutrients and trace minerals. I take sea vegetable supplements every day, since I dont at all enjoy the actual taste of sea vegetables. My favorite sea vegetable supplement? Kelp (bladderwrack), and brown seaweed extract, which is known to be a powerful anticancer supplement: Sea vegetables are exceptionally concentrated packages of nutrients and phytochemicals. They contain vitamins, are high in ber, and have small amounts of protein. Mostly, sea vegetables are a rich source of such minerals as potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, and iodine. ...Thanks to their phytochemical power, sea vegetables are anti-inammatory and tumor-suppressing. Their phytochemical content also includes the carotenoids and avonoids, the most powerful of the antioxidants. Researchers have suggested that the ubiquitous presence of sea vegetables in the Japanese diet may be why the incidence of breast cancer in Japanese women is onesixth that in American women. Sea vegetables have been shown in the test tube and in laboratory animals to suppress colon cancer and to boost the immune system. A drink of broth made from kombu, a brown alga, reduces hypertension and can help prevent strokes. Japanese scientists believe that substances in nori ght numerous diseasecausing bacteria, combat ulcers, and serve as an anticoagulant. Certainly folk medicine has long used kelp, really a brown alga but used as a catchall word for sea vegetables, to treat such ailments as indigestion, arthritis, stress, skin diseases, asthma, even constipation. And ongoing research into the supranutritive power of sea vegetables seems to be conrming its healing potential. - Stephanie Beling, M.D., Power Foods
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Things To Avoid:
Avoid sodium nitrite, found in most packaged meat products, because it is a precursor chemical to powerful carcinogenic compounds that are well known to contribute to cancers of the digestive system. Avoid MSG, found in many sausage products, salad dressings, soups, and mixes. It has been shown to overexcite nerve cells, damage the hypothalamus gland and imbalance the endocrine system, cause reproductive problems, result in stubborn obesity, and is suspected of being a causative factor in Alzheimers disease, behavioral disorders, and many other problems. Avoid hydrogenated oils, found in margarine products, shortening, and virtually all baked goods such as brand-name crackers and cookies. These oils contain trans fatty acids and are well known to contribute to poor cardiovascular health and heart disease, not to mention nervous system disorders. Avoid articial chemical sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame, and sucralose. These articial chemical sweeteners have a dubious health record at best, and none have undergone long-term epidemiological studies on humans. Aspartame, in particular, has been linked to blindness, migraine headaches, seizures, dizziness and a variety of other problems. Avoid non-organic meat products such as hamburger, steaks, and ham. Even though they cost more, organic meat products have the benet of being free of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and bizarre feed practices that non-organic livestock are normally subjected to. Avoid diet soft drinks, not simply because of the chemical sweeteners they contain, but because they are highly acidic drinks that disrupt the acid/alkaline balance in the human body. This disruption, in turn, causes your body to lose bone mass as it attempts to buffer dietary acid with skeletal alkaline minerals. Avoid homogenized milk fats like those contained in milk. These homogenized fats are articially manipulated through an unnatural process that makes them difcult for humans to digest. There are serious questions about whether the human body can properly deal with homogenized fats, and many believe these fats contribute to poor cardiovascular health. Avoid dairy in general, since cows milk is the perfect food for baby cows, but not for adult human beings. Most humans are allergic to cows milk, and regular consumption promotes asthma, constipation, sinus problems and general stagnation. That may seem like a lot of things to avoid, and you may think that theres nothing left to eat! Dont be concerned. In the sections that follow, I will list a great number of foods and products that you can safely consume that will also avoid you being exposed to the dangerous metabolic disrupters mentioned above. There is a wide selection of foods you can eat to keep you slim, trim and healthy. With a little bit of knowledge and creativity, youll nd ample foods and recipes to choose from, and you will never feel as if youve been deprived!
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New habits
Finally, heres a summary of the new habits you may wish to form to enhance your health: Get into the habit of reading ingredients labels on the foods you purchase. It may sound daunting at rst, but after reading the labels of a few hundred items, youll nd that the labels are very easy to read and that, indeed, you can generally guess which metabolic disrupters you will nd on the labels of any food in a grocery store. Youll also learn where to look for certain ingredients on the label. For example, sodium nitrite is almost always the last or second-to-last ingredient on packaged meat products. Monosodium glutamate is an easy ingredient to nd on ingredients labels because it is a very long chemical name and it stands out, but its aliases (hydrolyzed, autolyzed, yeast extract) are harder to spot. Hydrogenated oils are usually located near the beginning of the list of ingredients, and most chemical sweeteners are located near
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the end. By recognizing and applying these simple patterns for reading ingredients labels, you can quickly scan the label of any food in less than 10 seconds and determine whether you should eat it. As much as you can, the get into the habit of relying on natural, unprocessed foods rather than purchasing excessive amounts of packaged, manufactured foods. Theres nothing wrong with purchasing manufactured foods such as breads, soups, microwaveable meals and so on, as long as you dont rely on these items for the bulk of your diet. Get into the exercise habit. Cardiovascular exercise is crucial to supporting your weight loss and health enhancement goals. It will make your diet far more effective, and it will accelerate your progress towards your goals. Cardiovascular exercise will improve your mood, enhance the function of your immune system, build stronger muscles and bones, increase the oxygenation of the organs and bones in your body, and improve your overall health and state of wellbeing. Cardiovascular exercise will also accelerate your weight loss results. Consider the extraordinary benets of engaging in strength training, regardless of your age or gender. Strength training builds new muscle mass that increases your resting metabolic rate and burns calories even when youre not exercising. If you been overweight or are now, you already have impressive muscles supporting your skeletal system and body weight. If you dont train those muscles while you lose weight, you will actually lose muscle mass along with your body fat and end up as a slimmer, but weaker human being. With strength training combined with a smart diet, you end up being both thin and t. Finally, supplement your diet with chlorella and spirulina, superfoods, sea vegetables, whole food powders, or other whole food supplements. This will provide your body with healing phytochemicals that are almost always lacking in the diets of most people. If you put all of this together -- the ingredients in foods to avoid, the foods to add to your diet, and the new behaviors to pursue -- you realize that this isnt really a diet at all. Its a lifestyle, something that you follow for the rest of your life. And if you follow this, that will be a long time, because you will live much longer and much happier than those dieters who consume metabolic disrupters, who dont drink enough water or eat enough ber, and who avoid exercise and strength training. Thats why I almost think its strange to call this a diet a diet at all. I consider it a way of life, not something that I do merely to lose a few pounds. Think about it: if a diet helps you lose body fat, feel more energetic, enhance your mood and state of mind, and feels stronger and more active, then why would you ever want to go back to your old eating habits after youve experienced all of these benets? Consider your diet to be something you do for life, not something thats merely a craze or fad. If you make it part in your everyday lifestyle, you will live a long, healthy and very satisfying life.
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It took me years to shift my diet to the foods listed below while avoiding all of the metabolic disrupters and dangerous ingredients discussed here. So dont expect your own progress to be instant, and dont hope for overnight miracles. Dietary habits take time to change, and even though you may nd that you dont enjoy every one of the food items listed here today, if you revisit those items in a few months or years, you may nd them rather enjoyable. That was my experience with avocados, for example: I wouldnt touch avocados until just a few years ago, but now I make them a staple of my diet. The key? I created new ways to use avocados that are virtually unknown by people in the U.S., such as blending avocados with soy milk and stevia to make a delicious shake that contains absolutely no animal fats, no sugars, and yet delivers all of the creamy texture and rich taste of high fat ice cream.
Foods To Buy:
Now Im going to take all the information contained in this manual and apply it to create a shopping list of foods to buy and foods to avoid when shopping at the grocery store.
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What you want to be eating are eggs that come from chickens who are given access to natural diets. For chickens, that means eating lots of insects, grasses, and seeds. By pursuing this diverse, natural diet, chickens will automatically consume increased quantities of many substances such as omega-3 fatty acids -- the healthy oils. Eating raw grasses, seeds, and insects also provides the chickens with healthy enzymes, phytonutrients, bers and protein that contribute to the health of the chicken in much the same way that vegetables and whole grains contribute to the health of human beings. With this healthy, natural free range diet in place, the chicken produces a nutrient-rich egg that is far superior to a mass produced egg that comes from what I call factory chickens. Free-range chickens also have better mental health. You may nd it strange to talk about the mental health of chickens, but foods produced from healthy, happy animals are far better than foods derived from animals driven insane as a result of inhumane farming practices.
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Egg whites
Another way to get eggs into your diet is to purchase egg whites. You can nd these in the small milk carton shaped packages, sold under a variety of brand names. These are pasteurized egg whites, which come out of the carton in liquid form. You can nd this product in both the pure form -- that is, with no extra coloring or avoring -- or you can nd it packaged as a yellow colored liquid that resembles scrambled eggs. I prefer the plain, uncolored variety, because I dont want egg whites that are already avored or colored. Liquid egg whites not only provide an excellent source of protein, they are also extremely versatile. I use them in a wide variety of foods in my own diet. You can safely drink them raw, and I frequently use egg white liquid as a supplement in blended soy milk drinks. Basically, you can add liquid egg whites to any drink or shake that you would normally mix in a blender, transforming it into a high protein drink. Liquid egg whites can also be used to transform a regular bowl of cereal into a high protein bowl of cereal. Just pour some egg whites in with the milk and mix them together before adding the cereal. Of course, you are hopefully using stevia as your sweetener of choice rather than rened white sugar. Egg whites can also be added to any baking recipe to transform them into high protein recipes. Baked egg whites are uffy and help hold foods together, so they make an excellent ingredient for items like pancakes, breads, and even pasta. Of course, you can also just pan fry the egg whites with frozen onions, add a little pepper, and youll have a low-fat, high protein scramble! But if you are going to scramble these eggs, youre probably better off using whole eggs in the rst place and getting to benet from the egg yolk. I use liquid egg whites in my chocolate dough recipe, which combines coconut oil, chocolate whey protein powder, Jenny Lee Supergreens, stevia, and liquid egg whites to create a lowcarbohydrate, high-protein, nutrient dense meal that keeps you satised for hours. You may nd other uses for liquid egg whites as well. Its truly a versatile food. The only drawback to liquid egg whites is trying to locate organic egg whites. So far, I have been unsuccessful -there doesnt appear to be any such product on the market at the time of this writing. Of course, you could go through the trouble of separating the egg whites yourself from organically produced eggs, but those egg whites have not been pasteurized and cannot be safely use in the same way as pasteurized egg whites. (You shouldnt drink them raw, for example.)
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Salmon and sh
Fish products, such as salmon, codsh, whitesh, and other varieties, offer excellent sources of protein and healthy oils. The thing to watch out for here is processed, rened sh foods. For example, if you purchase frozen sh steaks and think you are eating a healthy diet, think again: the sh steaks are not only breaded with a high carbohydrate breading, they are also prepared with both hydrogenated oils and monosodium glutamate (MSG), making them a triple threat to your diet and your health. The only way to eat sh is grilled, baked, or pan-fried. If its deep-fried or breaded, avoid it completely.
Fresh vegetables
As you make your shopping rounds at the local grocery store, dont forget to load up on the basics: fresh vegetables. My favorites are steamed broccoli, pan-fried broccoli, pan-fried bean sprouts with soy sauce, stir-fried cabbage with shrimp and garlic (with olive oil at medium heat, of course), and steamed asparagus. Whatever vegetables you like, make them the basis of your diet. To a large degree, fresh vegetables that are prepared with minimal cooking (raw or steamed, for example) provide balancing elements to your diet. For example, the vegetables provide ber thats traditionally lacking in popular diets. They also provide digestive enzymes that are typically absent from
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manufactured foods. Furthermore, these vegetables provide phytonutrients and a wide spectrum of healing compounds that enhance your overall health and support your dietary goals. In fact, let me share with you a little trick I used to increase my consumption of fresh vegetables. The way I follow a weight control strategy is to not only avoid carbohydrates, but to also count calories. I count the total calories of every food item I eat, but all vegetables are free. That is, I dont count raw or steamed vegetables at all. This way, if Im approaching my caloric limit for the day, I always know I can ll up on a plate of delicious steamed broccoli prepared with mashed garlic and a touch of salt, and it wont put me over the calorie limit for the day. I eat very large portions of salad quite frequently, and I used salad dressings and other condiments sparingly. But whatever the strategy or trick you use to increase your consumption of fresh vegetables, stick with it. The importance of consuming vegetables can hardly be overstated.
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Hummus
Heres a food most people overlook, and its one of my favorites: hummus. Hummus is made from mashed chickpeas, blended with tasty ingredients like vinegar, salt and red peppers. I was never a fan of hummus until I rediscovered it two years ago, and now I consume it quite frequently. Hummus is moderately low in carbohydrates, high in protein, high in ber, and contains some healthy oils. Today, even common grocery stores carry hummus products that contain none of the metabolic destructor ingredients mentioned in this manual. Just be sure to read the ingredients labels and make sure youre not buying some cheap, low-end hummus made with partiallyhydrogenated oils. My favorite variety is spicy red pepper hummus, which is offered by several different manufacturers. I use it as a dip together with either WASA crackers (see below), or Bran-a-crisp wafers. It makes for an easy, zero preparation meal that meets all the requirements of healthy dieting without ingesting any of the metabolic disrupting ingredients.
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Pearled barley
If you know anything about processed grains, you know that many of them have a high glycemic index, meaning that they spike your blood sugar and encourage your body to store fat. Its true of oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, and other cereals (served hot or cold). But if youre craving for grains of some kind, heres a great choice that wont blow you away with rened carbohydrates: pearled barley. You can nd pearled barley near the oatmeal section at most grocery stores. Its sold in a tiny box with a very high markup on this basic grain that actually cost no more than a couple dollars a pound if you buy in bulk. (Try your local co-op.) Pearled barley has the lowest glycemic index of any grain, and you can cook it into a sort of kashi pilaf by boiling the grain and then pouring off any extra water. From there, you can decide what to add to the grain to make a delicious meal. My favorite? Add a tablespoon of coconut oil and liquid butter avoring from products like I Cant Believe Its Not Butter or Smart Squeeze. Mix it together and enjoy. If you want it a little sweeter, add some stevia
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or natural sweeteners that are very low on the glycemic index such as agave nectar or prickly pear cactus juice. You can also go the spicy route and add some Cajun avoring, red peppers and boiled shrimp to make a pearled barley gumbo. You get the idea. With boiled pearled barley as the base, you can add practically any avoring you want to make a healthy, delicious and lling meal. Another of my favorites is to add cinnamon powder, coconut oil, rice protein powder and stevia. It makes for an excellent cinnamon oatmeal replacement, without all the carbohydrates. But dont think that all barley is the same. Rolled barley has a very different effect on your body than pearled barley. Rolled barley has a higher glycemic index and acts a lot more like oatmeal. Therefore, it should be avoided. Stick to pearled barley as your grain of choice.
Beneber
In the category of supplemental bers, Ive already mentioned psyllium husk ber, which is my top recommended source for getting ber into your diet without all the extra sweeteners and chemical ingredients found in many ber products. But not everyone can stomach the rather bland taste of psyllium husk ber, and for those, my next recommendation is a product called Beneber, made by the same company that makes Ex-Lax. Beneber is made from guar gum, a natural ber that I also use as a thickening ingredient in many drinks and shakes. Beneber can be easily added to your soups, drinks and recipes to give you additional ber without all the grit of psyllium husk ber. On an ounce per ounce basis, however, its rather expensive, but it does have the advantage of being readily available at stores like Wal-Mart and regular grocery stores. Or look for it in the pharmacy section near the ber supplement products. I dont regularly use this product myself, because I prefer psyllium husk ber, but I have used it before and found it to be quite easy to take. It also has no avor, which is good since you dont eat ber for the taste anyway.
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of it in this cereal that I dont mind. What I do is use stevia to sweeten it up, turning it into a rather sweet cereal without adding any additional sugars whatsoever. It tastes wonderful! My recipe is to add one scoop of soy protein or rice protein, some stevia powder, and some soy milk and mix it together in the bowl before adding the cereal. With the cereal added, its a delicious bowl of a high protein, high-ber cereal that satises even my strongest desire for a bowl of Lucky Charms. I purchase this Hi-Lo cereal at Trader Joes, and Im not sure where else it might be available, but I suspect that as it gains in popularity, youll be able to nd it at other retailers as well. If you dont nd it at your grocery store, approach the store manager and ask them for it. Give them the web address of the Organic Milling Co. and ask them to stock the product. Its the very best way to get these stores to carry the products you want to eat.
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its solid at room temperature (about 76F), it can be spread on crackers like butter, blended with practically any drink, or melted onto any food item thats warmer than room temperature. Coconut oil can be sweetened with stevia, avored with spices and powders, accented with cinnamon, and blended into just about any recipe imaginable. It is one of the most versatile health ingredients of all. So why does nearly everyone believe that coconut oil is such a dangerous source of dietary fat? The answer is because coconut oil is made of saturated fats, and even though the fats in coconut oil are quite different from fats in animal products, the two have been lumped together into one group and blamed for a vast array of diseases. That blame, it turns out, isnt justied. Many of the studies upon which the high-fat theory of heart disease is based fail to consider the ravaging effects of high-carbohydrate diets. From my research, I think excess consumption of carbohydrates, not saturated fats, is to blame for the vast majority of heart disease and cardiovascular disorders were seeing today. But even if you believe that saturated fats are the primary culprit for heart disease, coconut oil is an entirely different kind of fat. For one thing, its derived from a plant, not an animal. Its molecular structure is that of medium chain triglycerides, which are metabolized quite differently than the long chain triglycerides found in animal fat. Medium chain triglycerides are not so easily stored as body fat like long chain triglycerides. Instead, these medium chain triglycerides are burned like a slow, steady carbohydrate, providing steady, sustained energy that doesnt spike blood sugar levels or produce an exaggerated insulin response. As a result, coconut oil is ideal for diabetics, although if you make such a statement to most doctors, they would vehemently argue against it. But most medical professionals simply havent researched coconut oil enough to know these things. Remember, it wasnt long ago that the American Heart Association warned people to avoid practically all oils -- even heart-healthy omega-3 oils! Consider this: coconut oil was consumed in very large quantities by the native populations of Hawaii, the Philippines, and the South Pacic islands, all of which demonstrated remarkably low rates of heart disease up until the time they were exposed to the high-carbohydrate, highly rened Western diet. Once the Western diet arrived on their shores, they began to experience all the common diseases we now see as epidemic in modern society. But their native diet, which was high in coconut oil, produced no such disease. I dont have the space to cover this topic in detail here, but I encourage you to learn more and to challenge any mistaken beliefs you might have about coconut oil being somehow harmful. In fact, it is a highly benecial oil. I eat it every day, and I recommend it to everyone who asks what kind of diet I follow.
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The recipe:
Spoon out one avocado and dump the avocado esh into a blender. Add in three cups of milk or soymilk, and a handful of ice cubes. Add a good dose of stevia powder and a spoonful of honey, if you want. Now blend. In less than 30 seconds, you will have the most beautiful green, delicious, low-sugar, nutrient dense milkshake ever invented. It tastes just like ice cream, thanks to the high fat content of the avocado combined with the sweetness of the stevia or honey. Its an amazing recipe that impresses virtually everyone who tries it. Most people dont try it, however, because they dont have the courage to do something different with avocados other than making guacamole. But if youve got the gumption, try this recipe for yourself and then toy with it to get the exact avor and texture that you like best. This is the sort of sixty-second recipe that you can make a daily part of your healthy diet. It supplies healing nutrients, ber, protein, and healthy fats all in a delicious package that has virtually no carbohydrates whatsoever. And notice that you didnt have to spend a fortune on some instant drink mix, either: all you needed was a few common ingredients available at most grocery stores. If you want to make this recipe even sweeter and dont mind the extra carbs, add a banana to mix. You might even try it that way at rst and then slowly transition off the banana over a period of several weeks.
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As youve seen here, there are many different ways to eat avocados that go beyond the more traditional uses that you may be more familiar with. In my experience, avocados are best served up sweet, not salty. But any way you enjoy them, be sure to enjoy them frequently. Avocados are truly a miracle food provided by nature.
Unsweetened soymilk
Youve probably already gured out that I dont drink cows milk. Im not going to list all the reasons here, since Ive covered many of them already, but I do want to tell you why I prefer to drink soy milk and why you might consider trying it yourself. There is a danger in soy milk, however: most soy milk products at the grocery store are sweetened with cane juice and are, therefore, high in added sugars. The solution? Purchase unsweetened soy milk and add your own stevia powder. It makes a sweet, low-sugar, healthy drink that provides the healing benets of soy isoavones along with a good balance of protein and fat. I drink soy milk not only because of whats in it, but also because of what isnt in it. Soy milk doesnt contain pus, for example, which is always present in small quantities in dairy milk. Soy milk also does not contain blood, which is another substance that is allowed in small quantities in cows milk. Continuing with the list, soy milk does not contain antibiotics or articial growth hormones, which are presently suspected of disrupting the natural hormone balance of the human body and perhaps even contributing to prostate cancer and breast cancer. Overall, soy milk avoids all of these rather gross substances that are typically present in dairy milk. And by drinking soy milk, I also avoid ingesting homogenized milk fats which are, as discussed earlier, modied fats that are suspected of interfering with the normal fat metabolism in the human body. For all of these reasons, soy milk remains a healthy choice as long as it isnt sweetened. But unsweetened soy milk is quite bitter, and most Americans wouldnt touch it. So youve got to sweetened it with something, and most soy milk manufacturers use low impact sweeteners like barley malt and rice syrup to avoid using using rened sugars.
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All of that disappeared when I stopped consuming milk products. My sinuses cleared up within a matter of weeks, my bowel function transitioned to a healthy state, and I no longer needed to carry around packs of tissue. Unfortunately, I didnt gure this out until I was well out of school. So much for timing. I can testify to the fact that life is a lot more enjoyable when youre not blowing snot every few minutes, and thats why you couldnt pay me a million dollars to go back to a diet that included dairy products like milk or cheese. I simply decided that I dont want the negative health effects that these dairy products caused me. Whether dairy products cause you to experience the same symptoms is something that only you can determine. The dairy industry, of course, denies that any of this occurs with anyone, but millions of people who are discovering the side effects of dairy products now know otherwise. Stick with soy milk. It wont clog you up. And it wont turn you into a geeky nose-blowing math nerd.
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The great thing about eating nuts is that, similar to coconut oil, nuts provide a healthy source of dietary fat that stabilizes your blood sugar while providing a slow, steady stream of calories over a period of several hours. But its also easy to overdo the consumption of nuts. Because they are so calorie dense, youre eating a high number of calories when you consume nuts, especially if you are snacking on an empty stomach. From my experience, the best way to eat nuts is to consume 10 to 15 nuts as part of a meal that also consists of ber, protein, and water. This way, the high calorie nuts wont dominate your meal, but they will make your meal last a lot longer and prevent you from getting hungry too quickly. In addition to all of this good news about nuts, the nut oils themselves have extraordinary healing properties. Peanut oil, for example, is known to help counter arthritis and inammation. Every nut oil delivers a fascinating array of healing nutrients, but no healing effects can be claimed on the labels of these foods according to FDA regulations, so the only way to nd out about the healing properties of these natural oils is to keep educating yourself by reading books like this one. If you want to skip the research, heres the short version: eat a little bit of nut butter each and every day as part of your overall healthy lifestyle. As always, eat a variety of different nut butters so that you cycle through the healing benets of each particular nut. Almond nut butter, for example, is a natural anti-cancer compound. Peanuts are high in antioxidants and help reduce inammation. You can learn more about these nuts by visiting www. NewsTarget.com and searching for articles on peanuts or healthy oils.
Protein powders
Protein powder is an essential supplement for healthy people. The world of protein powders is vast and confusing, with a bewildering array of protein powder products that mostly cater to bodybuilders. Many protein powders contain chemical sweeteners such as aspartame or sucralose, so this is the rst ingredient to watch out for when purchasing protein. Personally, I recommend two types of protein powder: soy protein and rice protein. Look for protein powder products that are unsweetened (or sweetened only with stevia), and absolutely avoid protein powders made with articial sweeteners.
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The next best sweetener ingredient, in my opinion, is fructose. Although fructose is a rened carbohydrate, but it has a much lower glycemic index than rened sugar, and it closely resembles the sugars found in fruits. I used to be a big fan of whey protein, but after learning more about cows milk (from which whey protein is derived), I made the switch to vegetable proteins. Whey protein tastes delicious, but it can also be difcult to digest and can exhibit many of the same problems caused by milk and dairy products (constipation, sinus congestion, autoimmune disorders, etc.). In my personal experience, however, I didnt have major negative side effects from whey protein. I just chose to move away from whey because of its dairy origin. Your own experience may differ, of course, so feel free to use what suits you best. Currently, my #1 recommended protein powder is an unsweetened brown rice protein powder from a manufacturer called Nutribiotic. Their products are available at most health food stores.
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Summing it up
So now youve seen my recommended list of groceries and products that are safe to purchase and consume. Its not the entire list of things that are good for you, of course, so be sure to experiment with this list and expand on it in ways that work best for you. What this list does allow you to do, however, is to eat well while avoiding metabolic disrupters that are linked to diseases like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders and other serious health problems. If you stick to the list Ive given you here, you will largely avoid these disorders while simultaneously supporting a healthy lifestyle. In this list, I have frequently recommended organic products because they are both safer for you to consume and are grown by farmers and ranchers who operate with a higher degree of ethics and integrity. But I do want to clarify my position on organic foods and say that if you are on a very tight budget, it is far better to eat non-organic foods on this approved list than to turn to cheaper foods made with metabolic disruptors. Let me give you an example of what Im talking about: A shopper is looking for a good source of healthy dietary fats, and she is comparing organic avocados -- which are very expensive -- to a rened oil margarine product thats very cheap. Thinking that the organic avocado is simply too high a price to pay, she might choose the nonorganic margarine product. That would probably be a mistake, since a better choice would be to turn to non-organic avocados. The raw, fresh, unprocessed avocado is going to provide far better nutrition and health than any manufactured product, even if the avocado isnt organic. To explain this further, sometimes I see people at the grocery store who have their shopping carts loaded up with crackers, breakfast cereals, soft drinks and ice cream, but theyre hesitating in the produce section because they cant decide between organic lettuce or regular lettuce. I can hardly keep myself from jumping up and down in frustration, because the products this person has already chosen to put into their shopping cart are so outrageously unhealthy and contain such a large amount of metabolic disrupters that the decision between organic and plain lettuce is inconsequential. Organic lettuce isnt going to help this person. What they need to do is get rid of the metabolic disrupters in their diet, ditch the rened sugars, kick the soft drink habit, stop eating hydrogenated oils, and only then should they begin to consider the question of organic versus non-organic produce. In other words, organic foods are not going to make up for poor dietary choices. A head of organic lettuce doesnt counteract a bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. You dont get good karma or extra credit just by eating organic produce.
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Instead, look for steel cut oats, or oat groats. These offer the best health benets. Even then, you have to eat them sparingly, since they do provide a hefty dose of carbohydrates. Of course, its wise to completely avoid any avored oat products such as instant breakfast oatmeal packages. All of these contain rened sugars, chemical sweeteners, or both. They have no place in a healthy diet.
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When it comes to frozen sh products, however, theres one more thing to watch out for: MSG. The vast majority of all frozen sh products contain either MSG or yeast extract (which is an ingredient that contains MSG or free glutamic acid) in order to add avor to an otherwise avorless slab of sh. You have to look hard to avoid these excitotoxins in frozen sh products. With the prevalence of both hydrogenated oils and MSG in frozen sh products, Ive given up on the whole category of frozen sh. Instead, I purchase frozen shrimp, scallops, cuttlesh or squid, or I just head over to the deli and order fresh sh that I can prepare in any way I want.
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Any puffed grains like puffed rice or puffed wheat (high glycemix index)
Watch out for any air grains such as puffed rice or puffed wheat. The puffed rice snack products were rather popular during the low-fat craze, but few people stopped to consider the glycemic index of puffed rice in the rst place. It turns out that puffed rice impacts your body in very much the same way as white bread or rened sugars. Its spikes your blood sugar and results in the secretion of insulin from your pancreas -- two things that every health-conscious person should avoid.
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You can make your own sports drink by dropping a few grains of Celtic sea salt and stevia powder into a bottle of spring water. Chances are you probably get plenty of salt in your diet as it is, and you dont need to replace anything lost during exercise other than water unless youre a triathlete or Ironman contender.
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But theres another reason to avoid these breakfast meats: cooking with high heat also produces carcinogens. By microwaving or frying these meats at hot enough temperatures to make them brown, you are also creating toxic carcinogens that you ingest upon eating these meats. These carcinogens, combined with the sodium nitrite added by food manufacturers, results in a heightened health risk that you would be wise to avoid entirely. A better choice for breakfast? Eggs or fresh meats made without nitrites.
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you will have to avoid these substances in your diet. The more you choose to avoid, and the longer you avoid them, the more quickly you will shift to the right, closer to a state of perfect physical health. By adding a healthy dose of physical exercise such as cardiovascular training or strength training, you can further accelerate your shift towards the right. Other things that move you closer to the right include purchasing organic foods, eating more raw foods, and engaging in all-important nutritional supplementation through superfoods like chlorella and spirulina.
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is, in essence, a marketing branch of the agricultural industry. By advising people to eat more grains, they are in effect promoting the nancial interests of grain farmers. In fact, the Food Guide Pyramid should more accurately be called the Buy More Grains Pyramid. Overall, federal regulatory agencies do not have the political clout to tell American consumers the truth about link between foods and diseases, even if they wanted to. The food lobbies simply hold too much sway in Washington. As a result, dietary recommendations from the USDA have been watered down thanks to the meddling of politicians whose reelection campaigns are funded by food companies. When the USDA wanted to tell consumers to eat less red meat, for example, the meat industry balked and, through the inuence of Senators representing meat producing states like Texas, the advice to eat less red meat went through a miraculous transformation. Eat less red meat rst became limit your consumption of meats high in saturated fat. After another round of protest from the beef industry, this watered down claim was transformed even further to: increase your consumption of lean meats, a claim that apparently satised the beef industry because it is now part of the USDAs dietary recommendations guide. Even though many people within the USDA wished to advise consumers to reduce their consumption of red meat, the power and inuence of the beef industry was simply too strong. The recommendation to limit meat intake ultimately became advice to increase the intake of lean meats, which is almost precisely the opposite message that the scientic evidence truly supports! Thats food politics at work, and it helps explain why no federal regulatory agency would dare touch the sort of information I have presented in this guide: the food industry would go crazy, and anyone who suggested anything of the sort I have presented here would immediately lose their job. (Fortunately, Im not on the government payroll.) Thats why you can only get this information from people like myself who have absolutely no vested interest in the food industry. I promote foods that are healthy and that enhance the quality of life of human beings, and I blatantly and honestly expose foods and ingredients that promote disease. Its the most honest, straightforward information youll ever get on the relationship between foods and disease, and its the kind of information that I hope you now understand you can never receive from any newspaper, magazine, television station or government regulatory agency. Those organizations are simply unable to tell the truth about the relationship between foods and disease due to their political circumstances. This isnt some giant conspiracy: its just the way the world works. Everyone wants to keep their job, whether they work at the USDA or as an advertising salesperson for a popular magazine. If you just go with the ow, you keep your job. But if you rock the boat, you will not only nd yourself looking for a new job within a matter of days, you will probably be blacklisted by the entire industry and nd yourself without work for an extended period of time. Thats why even well-meaning people dont speak out about this kind of thing: they have families and they dont want to risk having no salary for the next two years while they look for a new job. If you are one of these well-meaning people who wants to speak out while also protecting your identity, please contact me. As an investigative journalist, I offer guaranteed protection of my sources while providing an outlet through which you can make your information public. Best way to reach me? Use a free email account from Hotmail or Yahoo as your return address. Keep your identity to yourself and tell me what youve got that you want made public. You can nd my email contact information on Newstarget.com
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(Still, I must say that I quote heavily from doctors in this guide, and the doctors I quote here would very likely agree with my assessment of most doctors. As with any profession, the quality, intelligence, ethics and abilities of doctors varies widely. There are very good doctors and very bad ones. The problem today is that there are far more of the latter than the former.) It just doesnt make sense to seek health advice from a so-called authority who cant, themselves, demonstrates a high degree of health. Would you take your car to a car mechanic who had to get a ride to work because his own car wouldnt start? Would you get your haircut from a person whose own hair looked like a ragged mop? Would you hire a web site designer whose own site looked awful? If you said no to these examples, then why on earth would you seek health advice from a person whose own health is anything other than stellar? You see, a piece of paper on the wall that says M. D. cant give a person the knowledge and wisdom to be healthy. The healthiest healers I know have no such credentials, and they dont need them. Walk into any Chinese herbalist shop in any city anywhere in the world, and youre likely to nd people who are in a high state of health. You wont see some obese Chinese doctor behind the counter, hawking the latest prescription drug. Instead, youre likely to nd a rather well-balanced, healthy person who can tell a lot more about your state of health by feeling your pulse for ve minutes then any conventional medical doctor could tell from $5,000 worth of high radiation CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging equipment. Heck, any good chiropractor in the U.S. can tell you more about your state of health than a CT scan. But getting back to the main question, what is it that qualies me to be an expert in nutrition? First of all, I dont claim to be such an expert, since that is only something that each individual reader can decide. My job is to share what I know, and I know what works because Ive experienced it rsthand. Ive gone from being near diabetic and overweight to lean, athletic, highly energetic and extremely healthy. In my own health transformation, my own appearance was altered so radically that people told me I seemed to drop 10 years of age. I have a resting pulse of 48. My blood chemistry nails the healthy mark on every single test such as liver enzyme function, blood platelet counts, cholesterol levels, and so on. My blood pressure is 105/65 and I have extraordinary bone mass density that makes my bones remarkably strong. (50 percent more dense than the bones of a 25 year old, actually.) Im not saying any of this to brag, but rather to share with you the extraordinary results that can be achieved by any person who applies sound nutritional wisdom with strength training and cardiovascular training over a period of several years. I went from an aged looking, depressed, lowenergy, overweight, near-diabetic individual on a high-carbohydrate diet to a lean, athletic, younglooking practitioner of healthy lifestyle choices in terms of foods, beverages and physical activity. I dont even have good genes for any of this: Im not an easy gainer like the hulks who put on 20 lbs. of muscle mass in 6 months by pumping weights at the gym. Im also not naturally thin, since all the men in my family have struggled with being overweight. Im highly sensitive to carbohydrates and very quickly put on pounds if I start eating foods like bread or grains. In other words, its easy to look at me and say, Gee, this guy must have it easy; he was probably born that way. But thats hogwash: I had to work for every health improvement that Ive achieved. I forced myself to learn the knowledge necessary to solve my own health problems, and that is, I believe, absolutely the only way that any person can become an expert in health. To compare the depth of my own knowledge and experience with a medical degree is ludicrous -- the medical degree
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doesnt even compare when it comes to knowledge about nutrition and the underlying causes of health. Then again, Im no expert when it comes to diagnosing diseases, writing prescriptions, and ordering lab tests for ill patients. Ill happily leave that to the doctors, however, since that seems to be their primary expertise. So what qualies me to talk about nutrition and health? The same thing that qualies anybody to talk about those things they have personally mastered through years of applied study, research and personal experience. A person who has taken the journey, and who has pursued an area of specialty with a high degree of personal passion is always going to be better informed and, I think, wiser than someone who simply read the information in the book and took a series of tests that proved he or she could remember what they read. There is simply no replacement for personal experience. When it comes to nutrition, doctors havent even read the books or taken the tests. There are no nutrition tests in most medical schools! And yet, with all this said, I still consider myself a novice when it comes to understanding the miracles of the human body and the healing potential of nature. I realize I have just scratched the surface of understanding when it comes to the human body and mind, nutrition, and nature. Theres a universe of information to explore, and perhaps someday I will be far enough along on that path to consider myself well informed. Frankly, Im just a humble student of nature.
I currently have heart disease. How soon can I reverse my disease if I follow your advice?
First of all, I am not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be one by putting on a white lab coat and writing drug prescriptions to patients. None of the information I present in this report should be taken as medical advice. If you have a serious medical condition, I invite you to seek out a qualied health professional, preferably someone who is open to the idea of using lifestyle changes to improve your overall state of health. You will probably nd this very challenging if you limit your search of medical professionals to MDs. So to answer this question, lets move away from talking about your specic health condition in particular, and move into talking about the ability of dietary changes to create a healing effect in human beings. When you look at the historical and modern-day scientic data about nutrition and diseases, it becomes clear that virtually all of our modern diseases are in fact caused by poor dietary practices. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, osteoporosis, irritable bowel syndrome, clinical depression, and even neurological disorders can all be traced to a specic dietary pattern that, when altered, results in a rather rapid improvement in the health outcome of the patient. But whether a dietary change can actually reverse a specic disease such as diabetes depends entirely on the degree of permanent damage that may have already been caused as the disease progressed. If a person permanently damages their liver through excessive alcohol consumption, for example, eliminating alcohol from the diet will not bring back the liver. In a similar way, the person who suffers from permanent, physical heart damage will not automatically start rebuilding a new heart by switching to a heart-healthy diet. However, it may be some comfort to know that many socalled physical malfunctions of the heart are actually not permanent physical deformities and have been shown to be reversible through dietary changes such as eliminating rened carbohydrates from your diet and supplementing with full-spectrum B vitamins.
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It was the very father of medicine, Hippocrates, who said Let thy food be thy medicine. (That was right after he said, First, do no harm, which has also been largely forgotten by Western medicine.) Food is not only the best medicine, but in fact the only medicine that a human being needs in order to achieve a high state of health and well-being. Prescription drugs do absolutely nothing to address the core causes of diseases and disorders: they only mask isolated symptoms, and by doing so, they encourage patients and doctors to overlook the root causes of these diseases, allowing them to progress even further to the point where they create more symptoms that, of course, require even more prescriptions. Its a vicious cycle that spirals into a life of misery and dependence on expensive prescription drugs. The answer to this dilemma, according to most people, is to make the government (i.e. the taxpayers) pay for all these prescription drugs. Its ridiculous, of course, since the real solution rests in altering a patients dietary and physical tness habits so that they can be free of all prescription drugs. This sort of thinking is obviously not very popular with the prescription drug manufacturers. The best results in using diet to reverse and prevent disease are experienced when a person begins to not only avoid metabolic disrupters in their diet, but when they start adding powerful nutritional supplements to their daily intake. I have personally experienced extraordinary gains in physical and mental health from taking superfoods like chlorella. Spirulina is another of my favorite superfoods, and I regularly take whole food complexes that are loaded with phytonutrients from a wide variety of plants. Im a big believer in nutritional supplementation and its ability to prevent and reverse disease. In fact, if you hang around me much, youll often hear me laughing about peoples fear of cancer, and how I believe that cancer is one of the easiest diseases to reverse through nutritional therapy. By last count, there are more than 20 nutritional approaches to cancer of which Im aware, and just two or three of these therapies, when used in combination, will beat the vast majority of early-stage cancers as long as the person simultaneously stops consuming cancer promoting products and ingredients like sodium nitrite. Cancer is exceedingly easy to reverse through nutritional therapy. One of the more powerful anticancer foods, by the way, is garlic. Eat it raw, if you can stand it, and watch your cancer cells melt away. Another powerful anticancer compound is apricot seed oil, a substance sometimes called vitamin B-17 or Laetrile. It is able to move directly to cancer cells within the human body and deliver potent tumerogenic chemical compounds directly to cancer cells without touching healthy cells. In other words, it operates much like conventional chemotherapy except it automatically targets cancer cells on a cell by cell basis rather than poisoning the entire body of the patient. Read more at: http://www.curezone.com/foods/laetrile.html In the food category, raw broccoli contains such powerful anticancer compounds that I have often stated it would be front-page headline news all over the world if it were a prescription drug. The drug manufacturing companies would claim they found the cure for cancer, and that everyone should take it even as a preventive measure. In fact, all you have to do to help prevent your own cancer is eat raw broccoli several times a week, or better yet, drink broccoli juice that you make fresh right your own kitchen.
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These are just a few small examples of the more than 20 nutritional therapies for reversing and preventing cancer through the use of dietary changes and nutritional supplements. Overall, the answer is yes, dietary changes can both prevent and reverse serious diseases. Be warned, however, that this position is considered heresy in the conventional medical establishment primarily because it threatens the prots of prescription drug companies. The people making money by selling you a lifetime of drugs certainly dont want you to nd out that you can cure your own diseases by altering your choice of foods and beverages. If that truth were to leak out and be widely accepted, drug company prots would be wiped out virtually overnight. People would be far healthier, but drug company executives would have to start looking for new jobs. They hate doing that. Once again, it isnt some giant conspiracy, its just a large number of people who are each looking out for their own jobs. If you were an executive in a drug company, who knows -- you might act in very much the same way.
How serious is the health risk from these metabolic disruptors anyway?
The health risk from consuming metabolic disrupters is extremely high. In fact, a critical review of the available scientic evidence clearly shows that the vast majority of our most common modern diseases are simply the result of consuming metabolic disrupters over a period of years or decades. Truly, more than 90 percent of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, mental disorders and digestive disorders can be entirely prevented by avoiding the metabolic disrupters that are so prominent in our food supply. Of course, accomplishing this across the entire population would mean making drastic changes to our food supply: perhaps 80 percent of the products in grocery stores would have to be reformulated or simply removed from the shelves, because thats the percentage of food products that promote disease. Of course, thats unlikely to happen anytime soon. Most people arent privileged to the kind of information youre getting here, and the vast majority of Americans will continue to eat whatever they like and whatever the food companies push on them. They are not really interested in being healthier, only in satiating their taste with the latest, greatest super-intense snack food that is offered to them in pretty packaging with a fty-cents-off coupon. From a national level as well, if you really take a look at the food politics at play here, you will nd that the people in charge at the USDA and FDA admit it would be disastrous to the economy if people actually avoided the foods that causes these diseases. The pharmaceutical and medical industries would be devastated, since people would no longer need prescription drugs, expensive diagnostic tests, and frequent visits to their doctors. If people ate healthy foods and avoided metabolic disrupters entirely, they simply would not get sick at anywhere near the rates we are seeing today. The nancial and economic implications of this are huge. All this is stated quite clearly in the book Food Politics, where Marion Nestle brings up this very point and describes how these federal agencies have concluded the only practical solution is to try to enrich certain foods to make sure they dont promote a very limited number of diseases related to nutritional deciencies. In other words, these federal agencies are well aware of the links between metabolic disrupting
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ingredients in foods and the diseases they cause in the general public, but they refuse to take action to educate the public or force food manufacturers to reformulate their foods simply because the economic fallout would be too great.
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I have frequently explained this to people who complain that buying organic foods is too expensive. I challenge them by asking them to tell me the cost of one night at a hospital. Whats the cost of a single visit to the doctor? What is the cost of having heart disease, cancer, or diabetes that is caused by consuming processed foods made with ingredients that promote these diseases? In comparison, organic foods and unrened, unprocessed foods are a bargain.
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5. Physical exercise
Finally, get serious about physical exercise. You cant diet your way to a t, lean body. At some point, youre going to have to get on your feet and start moving. There are no magic bullet workarounds that will allow you to avoid exercise and be healthy at the same time, so we all might as well stop waiting for them to appear. Physical exercise is quite simply a prerequisite for human health. If youre not already physically active, you can get started with something as simple as daily walking. Whatever you do, rest assured that your physical exercise efforts will not only accelerate the progress you make on your diet, it will also dramatically alter your mood and help increase both your bone mineral density and lean body mass. It will also, of course, increase your cardiovascular health, immune system function, and even improve digestion. The list goes on and on, but you get the point: move it or lose it.
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http://www.JennyLeeNaturals.com
Offers Jenny Lee Supergreens, my most highly recommended superfood powder product. Its made with chlorella, spirulina, quinoa, and a variety of other health-promoting superfood ingredients. I use it daily.
http://www.UltimateLife.com
Makers of The Ultimate Meal superfood powder. I have experienced tremendous results from this product. Ive also seen people drop 25 pounds of body fat in a month by consuming The Ultimate Meal.
http://www.Snackmasters.com
Makers of meat jerky products processed with no sodium nitrite or MSG (something thats very difcult to nd).
http://www.BobsRedMill.com
Bobs Red Mill makes the only grains Ill buy. These are whole grains and exotic grains (such as quinoa, which isnt really a grain, by the way) that can be part of a healthy lifestyle. Some of my favorite products from this company? Flax meal, wheat germ, pearled barley, and guar gum (which I blend into various superfood drinks).
http://www.Melissas.com
Makers of healthy, natural food products that have managed to gain widespread distribution through grocery stores and Wal-Mart. I like their hummus, soy cheese, tofu, and other products. Highly recommended.
http://www.JustTomatoes.com
Makers of dried fruits and vegetables with nothing added (no sultes, no preservatives). These foods are very expensive on a per-pound basis, but a little goes a long way. I use their dried fruits and add them to breakfast cereals. You can also use their dried vegetables in soups. Very handy products from an honest company.
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http://www.DiestelTurkey.com
Makers of deli-style turkey meat products containing no nitrites and no MSG. Difcult to nd, but check for their products at health food grocers like Wild Oats and Whole Foods.
http://www.wasa-usa.com
Makers of my favorite low-carb, whole grain cracker thats totally free of hydrogenated oils. All crackers should be this healthy! Their WASA crackers are readily available at most grocery stores, sometimes located near the kosher crackers section.
http://www.branacrisp.com
Another of my favorite crackers. Made with loads of ber and no hydrogenated oils, these crackers are my #1 choice for using with coconut oil and stevia powder. Spread coconut oil on these crackers, add some liquid butter avor, sprinkle some stevia, and youve got a 100 percent healthy snack with no metabolic disruptors!
http://www.Organicmilling.com
Makers of my current favorite choice for low-carb breakfast cereals: Hi-Lo cereal. It contains only 5g of carbs per serving. Although it isnt very sweet out of the box, it can be sweetened up with stevia. I also add whey protein powder to add protein to the cereal. Highly recommended.
http://www.Kettlefoods.com/ketus/index.html
Kettle Foods makes a variety of products, and I dont recommend all of them (I dont recommend potato chips, no matter who makes them, for example). But I highly recommend their nut butters, especially their almond butter. All of Kettles nut butters are made without hydrogenated oils or added sugars. Delicious!
http://www.galaxyfoods.com
Galaxy Foods makes a variety of veggie-based dairy replacement products like veggie cheese, veggie spread, and many other products. Ive eaten them for years and recommend them without hesitation. Theyre easier to nd on the East Coast, but Ive managed to nd them in Arizona without any problem. You may have trouble in the Midwest, however, unless you check at health food stores.
http://www.cvc4health.com
Makers of Super Stevia Extract, one of my favorite powdered stevia products. I buy it at Trader Joes.
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